





^^0^ 

6""^ 



^^^V. %- 








0* '.i 



\ 














v^^ * 






.5^^^. 










f o • » J- 



•,!ri%/^.. ./>ia^%%. .*•'^•A*i^.'^ 









■^s^.. \w/mm; ^^v^^_^ ^z 



''Wms j'^% ^ym'A^ -^^ 


















POEMS 



By ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 



INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST RHYS 




BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC. 



PUBLISHERS .-. .-. NEW YORK 



"'•Vi 



Printed in the n 

United States of America oC^ ^ --^ 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

The publishers feel justified in issuing another anthology 
of selections from the poetical works of Algernon Charles 
Swinburne, for the very excellent reason, that there is no 
one volume, at present obtainable, in which the reader can 
get a real idea of all that is best of the many different 
phases of Swinburne's genius; of the poet who has been de- 
scribed as "the last of the Giants." 

From the period of passionate expression, on through the 
poet's marvellous manifestation of the ancient Greek spirit, 
to the more recent phase of pure lyricism and romantic ideal-, 
ism, his genius at all times, possesses the qualities of great- 
ness. 

Each poem is printed complete and the text has been 
carefully compared with the authorized English edition of 
Swinburne's works. 

The publishers wish to express their appreciation to Mr. 
T. R. Smith for his invaluable aid in compiling this an-, 
thology. Bequest 

Albert Adsit Olemonei 

Aug. 24, 1933 

(Not available for exchange > 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction vii 

Dedication xvii 

Cleopatra i 

A Ballad of Life . » S 

A Ballad of Death 8 

Laus Veneris 12 

The Triumph of Time . . . . '. . .27 

Les Noyades 39 

A Leave Taking 42 

[tylus 44 

Anactoria 4^ 

Hymn to Proserpine 55 

[licet 61 

Hermaphroditus 66 

Fragoletta .68 

Rondel 70 

Satia te Sanguine 71 

A Lamentation . .74 

Before Parting 78 

[n the Orchard ' 79 

A Match ' . . 81 

Paustine 82 

Rococo 88 

Stage Love , . . .91 

A Ballad of Burdens 92 

Before the Mirror ........ 94 

Erotion 97 

[n Memory of Walter Savage Landor .... 98 

Before Dawn 100 

Dolores 103 

The Garden of Proserpine 117 

Sesferia 120 



CONTENTS 



Felise ........ 

An Interlude . . . 

Sapphics 

Madonna Mia 

'J'o Walt Whitman in America 
Chief Huntsman's Song from "Atalanta" 
Chorus from "Atalanta" .... 
Chorus from "Atalanta" .... 
Chorus from "Erechtheus" 

The Interpreters 

The Winds 

A Lyke-Wake Song 

A Watch in the Night .... 

Hertha 

Mater Dolorosa ...... 

A Forsaken Garden 

Relics 

Epicede 

A Vision of Spring in Winter 
Before Sunset . . . . . 

Song 

A Ballad of Francois Villon 

By the North Sea ..... 

After Looking into Carlyle's Reminiscences 

euthanatos 

A Child's Laughter 

A Child's Thanks 

Threnody 

Music: an Ode 

The Monument of Giordano Bruno 

Dedication 

A Swimmer's Dream 

A Nympholept 

The Palace of Pan ..... 
Sonnets on Browning . . , o . 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS.* 

We are not old enough to recollect the sensation caused by 
the appearance of the 1866 "Poems and Ballads"; and those 
of us who first came under the spell when the "Song of 
Italy" and the "Songs before Sunrise" had had time to clear 
the air and add an extraordinary radiant humanity and an 
ideal cry for freedom to the poet's account, were, if anything, 
fortunate in being so far belated. Out of the last-named 
volume, and out of "Atalanta in Calydon," we had our 
measure of delight filled to overflowing, and gained our 
sense — one of the pleasantest that can fall to mortal man — 
of poetry alive and operative in our midst and making all 
the while for our deliverance — for the things that counted 
and the things we really cared about. It was so we read 
"Hertha":— 

"I am in thee to save thee. 
As my soul in thee saith ; 
Give thou as I gave thee, 
My life-blood and breath, 
Green leaves of thy labour, white flowers of thy thought, and 
red fruit of thy death," 

There was a background of real events, too, to that lyric 
ecstasy; the Italian break for liberty, the names of Mazzini, 
Aurelio Saffi, and Garibaldi were still themes to stir the blood 
afresh. I remember, many years later, talking to Mme. 
Venturi in Chelsea about Mazzini and realising again how 
he and his cause had irradiated the hopes of the party of 

*This essay appeared in the Fortnightly Review for Decem- 
ber, 1905, while Swinburne was alive. 

vii 



I 



viii INTRODUCTION 

youth all over Europe — yes, reflected a vivid ray or two into 
English politics as well as into the thoughts of the new 
young English poets who were immediately contemporary. 

Mr. Swinburne had gone to Italy on leaving Oxford, and 
meeting Mazzini in London soon afterv^^ards had got very 
near the head-spring of that revolt. He tells us that it was 
in fact his ode on the insurrection in Candia which drew 
from Mazzini a letter of appreciation and so led to the actual 
beginning of their personal intercourse. The poet's mother 
— Lady Jane Henrietta Ashbumham — ^had been educated in 
Florence; and Florentine and Italian associations, early and 
late, were threaded from the beginning into the texture of 
his early life. It is not being too fanciful, perhaps, to relate 
to the same associations Dante Gabriel Rossetti's following 
in Oxford, when Burne- Jones and Swinburne were among 
the followers. Afterwards the Rossetti influence became for 
a time paramount. It immensely affected the younger poet; 
possibly it taught him some new imaginative subtleties, al- 
though it could teach him nothing of that marvellous com- 
mand of unsuspected cadences in which he already excelled. 
But beyond that one cannot help thinking that while Ros- 
setti may not have played exactly the part of the pigmy- 
king, who invited Herla underground, his effect was in some 
ways rather akin to the stronger lure of Gautier and Baude- 
laire. 

As the opening volume of this edition* may help to recall, 
the original "Queen-Mother and Rosamund," a scarce book 
now, was dedicated to Rossetti. That was in i860. Five 
years later "Atalanta in Galydon" was published, and still 
the public was but dully sensible of the new poet and his new 
music, "large- toned and sweet, and equal in lyric compass 
to every demand of his imaginative and dramatic idea." 
Then came the first "Poems and Ballads" volume; and the 



*The Collected Edition in Six Volumes. London: Chatto 
and Windus. New York: Harper and Brothers. 



INTRODUCTION ix 

excitement and the outcry that ensued came very near to 
producing an apoplexy among the critics and to shaking and 
cMsturbing severely one old-established firm of publishers. 

What seems to have happened precisely was this. An early 
copy of the "Poems and Ballads" volume came into the 
hands of Dallas, then chief literary reviewer to The Times, 
who, after ruminating on what we will call the pigmy-poems, 
strode off to Moxon's with an ultimatum. Either, said he, 
let them withdraw the book or he would denounce it and 
destroy it. As they had no wish to be denounced or de- 
stroyed themselves, they preferred to accept the former alter- 
native. John Camden Hotten brought out the book, and 
thereby began that independent publisher's tradition which, 
continued by his successors, has ever since been associated 
with Mr. Swinburne's writings. 

The noise that the critics and reviewers, responsible and 
irresponsible, made over the book, helped as always is the 
case to give it a sudden vogue. It became notorious. Both 
enemies and honest men attacked it ; the poet and his friends 
furiously resisted. The pigmies were delighted and flocked 
to the encounter. Only those who truly cared about the 
fortunes of poetry and knew the endless possibilities of the 
poet himself were disturbed at the encounter. They heart- 
ily wished the offending poems at the bottom of the sea; 
and I daresay many of them now would confess to a desire, 
that with the lapse of time and the cooling of the argument, 
they should have been allowed to sink finally into limbo. 

However, the poet, who has the casting vote, has decided 
otherwise; and since they, with the rest of his reprinted 
poems, remain exactly as they were originally printed and 
written, we must take the consolation of perceiving that, 
ranged with the mass of his work even in the single volume 
of the six, they seem rather grotesque than anything and 
more abnormal than wicked. 

But what a relief to escape from the caves to the upper 
air and the ampler region of Mr. Swinburne's ideal and most 



X INTRODUCTION 

magical control; there, indeed, one breathes free and hears 
the voices of the gods as they have sounded not often in all 
the major range of English verse. 

"I, last, least voice of her voices 

Give thanks that were mute in me long 
To the soul in my soul that rejoices 
For the song that is over my song. 
Time gives what he gains for the giving 

Or takes for his tribute of me 
My dreams to the wind ever living 
My song to the sea." 

So, too, one hears it, set to a superb music, in the exchange 
of lament at the passing of Meleager: — 

Meleager. 
Unto each man his fate 
Unto each as he saith 
In whose fingers the weight 
Of the world is as breath: 
Yet I would that in clamour of battle mine hands had laid hold 
upon death. 

Chorus. 
Not with cleaving of shields 
And their clash in thine ear, 
When the lord of fought fields 
Breaketh spearshaft from spear, 
Thou art broken, our lord, thou art broken, with travail, and 
labour, and fear. 

Meleager. 
Would God he had found me 

Beneath fresh boughs, 
Would God he had bound me 
Unawares in mine house, 
With light in mine eyes, and songs in my lips, and a crown on 
my brows. 

And in the same lyric tragedy of Althaea and Atalanta, one 
hears it in Althaea's noble speech at the beginning of the 
end: — 



INTRODUCTION xi 

"I would I had died unwedded, and brought forth 
No swords to vex the world ; for these that spake 
Sweet words long since, and loved me will not speak 
Nor love nor look upon me ; and all my life 
I shall not hear nor see them living men." 

But thinking of Althaea, we go on to recall Iseult and Mr. 
Swinburne's essays in the Arthurian cycle late and early. 
And Iseult and Tristram tempt us to picture the time again 
when the P. R. B. were alive and very potential; and when 
William Morris, and Rossetti, and Bume- Jones, and others 
were venturing into the domain of the Cymric king — allured 
as a Chrestien de Troyes and a Marie de France had been 
in an older day by that great fantasy. But this London 
Pre-Raphaelite and post-Tennysonian coterie wore its 
Arthurian and other colours with a difference. Their music 
had a stamp of its own. They seemed to be reared up in a 
little private music-gallery in the Victorian house of fame; 
with curious instruments and tapestries (which were really 
new, but looked old) hanging from the balustrade. 

It was not long, however, before the author of "Tristram 
of Lyonesse" came out of that close confraternity, persuaded, 
it may be, by the one mysterious man, who was unknown to 
the outer public, who had written nothing, painted nothing, 
done nothing that they knew of; but who, it was whispered, 
pulled many of the strings which moved the outward and 
visible performances of the rest. This was Mr. Theodore 
Watts, better known now as Mr. Watts-Dunton, who had a 
private door into the gallery and occasionally took one of 
its occupants, jaded by the over-charged aesthetic atmo- 
sphere, for a little walk in the open air. 

Common interests, and common topics — Aeschylus, let us 
say; the Elizabethan playwr ^hts and the gospel of the 
P. R. B., may have drawn Ros^etti's "friend of friends" into 
a closer friendship, too, with Rossetti's younger companion 
at Chatham House. Other ties and other associations con- 
tributing, we see how even "Tristram of Lyonesse" became 



xii INTRODUCTION 

a subject painted in "pleinair," and how its writer became 
more and more confirmed now in his innate love for the sea, 
and for its "joyful and fateful beauty," and for all that 
roving life with which his London days were intermitted. 
And if Rossetti pulled one way, Rossetti's friend, or so one 
conjectures, pulled hard the other way; and that other way 
led always back to the sea — to Guernsey and Sark and 
Dunwich, and back to the veritable original of Joyous Gard 
on the Northumbrian coast. 

From this time forth, Mr. Swinburne's poetry turned more 
expressly to landscape and place-effects, and one does not 
know whether to think it good or bad, seeing that descriptive 
verse can so easily be overdone. But, says Mr. Swinburne 
himself, if a "mere descriptive poetry of the prepense and 
formal kind" is open to reproach, there is another kind of 
poetry where the emotion of the spectator and the poet is 
clearly felt and where there is corresponding life in the writ- 
ten page. "This note," he says, "is more plain and positive 
than usual in the poem which attempts — at once a single 
and an ambitious attempt — to render the contrast and iJie 
concord of night and day on Loch Torridon; it is, I think, 
duly sensible though implicitly subdued in four poems of the 
west undercliff, born or begotten of sunset in the bay and 
moonlight on the cliffs, noon or morning in a living and 
shining garden, afternoon or twilight on one left flowerless 
and forsaken." 

This is a retrospect of the days when the Isle of Wight 
and the coast between Bonchurch and Ventnor figures 
largely in the story; when "the majestic and exquisite glory 
of cliff and crag, lawn and woodland, garden and lea," in- 
spired the four poems, "In the Bay," "On the Cliffs," "A 
Forsaken Garden," and the r edication of "The Sisters." 

However, it was not Mr. Swinburne's impassioned poetry 
of nature but his impassioned and much more typical song 
of man which gave him a distinctive effect upon his most 
susceptible hearers in the impulsive first period. And what 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

he himself says of this part of his work is so absolutely 
characteristic of the spirit in which it was conceived and 
written that it is impossible not to quote it: — 

The writer of "Songs before Sunrise," from the first line to 
the last (he says), wrote simply in submissive obedience to Sir 
Philip Sidney's precept "Look in thine heart, and write." The 
dedication of these poems, and the fact that the dedication was 
accepted, must be sufficient evidence of this. . . . These poems, 
and others which followed or preceded them in print, were in- 
spired by such faith as is born of devotion and reverence : not 
by such faith, if faith it may be called, as is synonymous with 
servility or compatible with prostration of an abject or wavering 
spirit and a submissive or dethroned intelligence. 

This is enough perhaps to suggest what can best be com- 
pleted by a leading passage from one of the poems he refers 
to. The "Mater Triumphalis" in this series would alone go 
far to support the view that the prevalent notion of his 
work and inspiration entertained by the outer public to-day 
is a hugely mistaken one: — 

" 'One hour for sleep,' we said, 'and yet one other ; 

All day we served her, and who shall serve by night?' 
Not knowing of thee, thy face not knowing. Oh mother, 
Oh, light, wherethrough the darkness is as light. 

"Men that forsook thee hast thou not forsaken, 
Races of men that knew not hast thou known. 
Nations that slept thou hast doubted not to waken, 
Worshippers of strange Gods to make thine own. 



'Death is subdued to thee, and hell's bands broken; 

Where thou art only is heaven ; who hears not thee 
Time shall not hear him ; when men's names are spoken, 

A nameless sign of death shall his name be. 

'Deathless shall be the death, the name be nameless; 

Sterile of stars his twilight time of breath; 
With fire of hell shall shame consume him shameless, 

And dying, all the night darken his death. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

"I have no spirit of skill with equal fingers 
At sign to sharpen, or to slacken strings; 
I keep no time of song with gold-perched singers 
And chirp of linnets on the wrists of kings. 

"I am thy storm-thrush of the days that darken, 
My petrel in the foam that bears thy bark 
To port through night and tempest; if thou hearken 
My voice is in thy heaven before the lark. 

"My song is in the mist that hides thy morning, 
My cry is up before the day for thee ; 
I have heard thee and beheld thee and give warning 
Before thy wheels divide the sky and sea. 

"Birds shall wake with thee voiced and feathered fairer, 
To see in summer what I see in spring; 
I have eyes and heart to endure thee, oh thunder-bearer, 
And they shall be who shall have tongues to sing." 

With this note of prophetic enthusiasm sounding in one's 
ears, one is not only led to the conviction that the popular 
idea of Mr. Swinburne, as the voice of a perverse and wicked 
generation is, as I said, mistaken, but that he is, of all poets 
of our era, that one who has suffered most from excess of 
moral energy, a too religious sense of pity and a too fierce, 
impassionate sympathy for his fellows. It is this incalcu- 
lable, emotional excess that tempted him in his earlier period 
to the inartistic and immature extremes he hints at in his 
Dedicatory Epistle; and that has led him on occasion in 
much later volumes to the desperate necessity of denouncing 
God and Mr. Gladstone. 

Recognising this as a sign of a vehemence of nature and 
imagination, which is certainly not like that of the typical 
English writers in verse or prose to-day, we shall be better 
able to realise how irresistible was the prime force that 
accompanied Mr. Swinburne's advent in the Victorian field. 
And as we measure his powers, too, in the major field of 
English poetry we are better able to relate him to those 



INTRODUCTION xv 

other English poets, who have, in the same way, taken 
Atlas's burden on their shoulders. 

If there is in his work, as there is in theirs, a characteristic 
resumption of things and influences not English, it may be, 
indeed, it is, because, while he learnt from the noblest 
English masters, from Marlowe and Shakespeare, and their 
kin, he learnt, too, from the Hebrew poets and Greek 
dramatists. To Aeschylus, he added Ezekiel; and from the 
Bible, as from the Elizabethans, he gained, no doubt, some- 
thing of that alarming biblical freedom of speech, which, 
joined to his vivid imagination of all sensuous and terrestrial 
things, has had much to do with the sudden indignation he 
has aroused among many honest folk. But they, one fears, 
do not always realise what an amazing book the Old Testa- 
ment is, or how dangerous to the minds and vocables of 
imaginative youth it may have proved. 

Far then from ranking the earlier Mr. Swinburne's "Songs 
before Sunrise," and the "Poems and Ballads," with the 
poets of an English decadence, we ought to count him with 
the Victorian humanists, who, if they \vent astray, did so 
from excess of zeal. They took up new weapons on behalf 
of this much misunderstood and estreated humanity of ours, 
drove out the traffickers that would make of free men vas- 
sals of kings and slaves of tradition, and carried the cry of 
their indignation, as Victor Hugo in his role of the new 
Prometheus had done, up to the gates of heaven itself. It 
does not at all impair the force of this suggestion, to have to 
admit that the leaders in the humanitarian revolt did some- 
times, in error or in wrath, furiously belabour each other and 
each other's disciples. Moral enthusiasm, like the poetic 
imagination, is a thing sul generis; it exists apart from the 
objects to which the intellectual or the aesthetic perceptions 
may guide it. Mr. Swinburne, denouncing his fellow repub- 
licans as the unfortunate anarchs and monarchs of this 
imperfect world, or the disciples and idolisers of a noble 
leader in the same cause oversea, is still acting strictly ac- 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

cording to the temperamental law of his being. We may see. 
renewed in him indeed an old predicament of many poets, at 
odds with themselves or their time; we see, that is to say, the 
prophet struggling in him with the poet, and at times over- 
whelming the poet; and then again we see the poet taking 
his lyric revenge. It was so that an earlier generation once 
saw, in the intellectual tragedy of Coleridge, the metaphysi- 
cian in him gradually overtaking, and dragging down, and 
killing out the poet. 

Probably we shall find this struggle, in Mr. Swinburne's 
case, continue in its other way, both for good and evil, on to 
the very end. That the spirit of pure poetry is by no means 
dead in him, we should know, if from nothing else, by the 
eloquence with which in his "Dedicatory Epistle" to the 
collected edition, he defends and maintains his practice of, 
and his loyalty to its tenets and its art. We should know it 
above all, if all that has been said on this count is true, by 
the significant close of this epistle addressed to his associate 
of twenty-five years past, to his "best and dearest friend," 
and Rossetti's "friend of friends," — Mr. Theodore Watts- 
Dunton. "It is nothing to me," concludes Mr. Swinburne, 
"that what I write should find immediate or general accept- 
ance; it is much to know that on the whole it has won for 
me the right to address this dedication, and inscribe this 
edition to you." Here, to be sure, is the echo of an old 
intolerance for the public, which may appear to suggest the 
voice in the wilderness; but the true incidence of this close 
is in its final clause, and may be more plainly seen when one 
realises that it is an appeal from that public, not to the gods 
or pigmies, but to a fellow-poet. 

Ernest Rhys. 



DEDICATION 
1865 

The sea gives her shells to the shingle, 

The earth gives her streams to the sea; 
They are many, but my gift is single, 

My verses, the first fruits of me. 
Let the wind take the green and the grey leaf, 

Cast forth without fruit upon air; 
Take rose-leaf and vine-leaf and bay-leaf 

Blown loose from the hair. 

The night shakes them round me in legions 

Dawn drives them before her like dreams; 
Time sheds them like snows on strange regions. 

Swept shoreward on infinite streams; 
Leaves pallid and sombre and ruddy, 

Dead fruits of the fugitive years; 
Some stained as with wine and made bloody, 

And some as with tears. 

Some scattered in seven years' traces. 

As they fell from the boy that was then; 
Long left among idle green places. 

Or gathered but now among men; 
On seas full of wonder and peril. 

Blown white round the capes of the north; 
Or in islands where myrtles are sterile 

And loves bring not forth. 

xvii 



O daughters of dreams and of stories 

That life is not wearied of yet, 
Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores, 

Felise and Yolande and Juliette, 
Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you, 

When sleep, that is true or that seems, 
Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you, 

O daughters of dreams. 

They are past as a slumber that passes. 

As the dew of a dawn of old time; 
More frail than the shadows on glasses, 

More fleet than a wave or a rhyme. 
As the waves after ebb drawing seaward, 

When their hollows are full of the night. 
So the birds that flew singing to me-ward 

Recede out of sight. 

The songs of dead seasons, that wander 

On wings of articulate words; 
Lost leaves that the shore- wind may squander, 

Light flocks of untameable birds; 
Some sang to me dreaming in class time 

And truant in hand as in tongue; 
For the youngest were born of boy's pastime. 

The eldest are young. 

Is there shelter while life in them lingers. 

Is there hearing for songs that recede, 
Tunes touched from a harp with men's fingers 

Or blown with boy's mouth in a reed? 
Is there place in the land of your labor, 

Is there room in your world of delight, 
Where change has not sorrow for neighbor 

And day has not night? 



In their wings though the sea- wind yet quivers, 

Will you spare not a space for them there 
Made green with the running of rivers 

And gracious with temperate air; 
In the fields and the turreted cities, 

That cover from sunshine and rain 
Fair passions and bountiful pities 

And loves without stain? 

In a land of clear colors and stories, 

In a region of shadowless hours, 
Where earth has a garment of glories 

And a murmur of musical flowers; 
In woods where the spring half uncovers 

The flush of her amorous face, 
By the waters that listen for lovers. 

For these is there place? 

For the song-birds of sorrow, that muffle 

Their music as clouds do their fire: 
For the storm-birds of passion, that ruffle 

Wild wings in a wind of desire; 
In the stream of the storm as it settles 

Blown seaward, borne far from the sun, 
Shaken loose on the darkness like petals 

Dropt one after one? 

Though the world of your hands be more gracious 

And lovelier in lordship of things 
Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious 

Warm heaven of her imminent wings, 
Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting, 

For the love of old loves and lost times; 
And receive in your palace of painting 

This revel of rhymes. 



Though the seasons of man full of losses 

Make empty the years full of youth, 
If but one thing be constant in crosses, 

Change lays not her hand upon truth; 
Hopes die, and their tombs are for token 

That the grief as the joy of them ends 
Ere time that breaks all men has broken 

The faith between friends. 

Though the many lights dwindle to one light, 

There is help if the heavens has one; 
Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight 

And the earth dispossessed of the sun. 
They have moonlight and sleep for repayment, 

When, refreshed as a bride and set free 
With stars and sea-winds in her raiment, 

Night sinks on the sea. 



CLEOPATRA 



Her mouth is fragrant as a vine, 
A vine with birds in all its boughs; 

Serpent and scarab for a sign 
Between the beauty of her brows 

And the amorous deep lips divine. 



II 



Her great curled hair makes luminous 
Her cheeks, her lifted throat and chin= 

Shall she not have the hearts of us 
To shatter, and the loves therein 

To shed between her fingers thus? 



Ill 



Small ruined broken strays of light, 

Pearl after pearl she shreds them through 

Her long sweet sleepy fingers, white 
As any pearl's heart veined with blue, 

And soft as dew on a soft night. 



IV 



As if the very eyes of love 

Shone through her shutting lids, and stole 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

The slow looks of a snake or dove; 

As if her lips absorbed the whole 
Of love, her soul the soul thereof. 



Lost, all the lordly pearls that were 

Wrung from the sea's heart, from the green 

Coasts of the Indian gulf-river; 
Lost, all the loves of the world — so keen 

Towards this queen for love of her. 



VI 



You see against her throat the small 

Sharp glittering shadows of them shake; 

And through her hair the imperial 
Curled likeness of the river snake. 

Whose bite shall make an end of all. 

VII 

Through the scales sheathing him like wings. 
Through hieroglyphs of gold and gem, 

The strong sense of her beauty stings. 
Like a keen pulse of love in them, 

A running flame through all his rings. 

VIII 

Under those low, large lids of hers 
She hath the histories of all times; 

The fruit of foliage stricken years; 

The old seasons with their heavy chime 

That leaves its rhyme in the world's ears. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 
IX 

She sees the heart of death made bare, 

The ravelled riddle of the skies, 
The faces faded that were fair, 

The mouths made speechless that were wise, 
The hollow eyes and dusty hair; 

X 

The shape and shadow of mystic things. 
Things that fate fashions or forbids; 

The staff of time-forgotten kings 

Whose name falls off the Pyramids, 

Their coffin-lids and grave-clothings; 



XI 



Dank dregs, the scum of pool or clod, 
God-spawn of lizard-footed clans. 

And those dog-headed hulks that trod 
Swart necks of the old Egyptians, 

Raw draughts of man's beginning God; 

XII 

The poised hawk, quivering ere he smote, 
With plume-like gems on breast and back; 

The asps and water-worms afloat 

Between the rush-flowers moist and slack; 

The cat's warm, black, bright, rising throat. 

XIII 

The purple days of drouth expand 
Like a scroll opened out again; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

The molten heaven drier than sand, 

The hot red heaven without rain, 

Sheds iron pain on the empty line. 

XIV 

All Egypt aches in the sun's sight; 

The lips of men are harsh for drought, 
The fierce air leaves their cheeks burnt white, 

Charred by the bitter blowing south, 
Whose dusty mouth is sharp to bite. 

XV 

All this she dreams of, and her eyes 
Are wrought after the sense hereof. 

There is no heart in her for sighs; 
The face of her is more than love — 

A name above the Ptolomies. 

XVI 

Her great grave beauty covers her 
As that sleek spoil beneath her feet 

Clothed once the anointed soothsayer; 
The hallowing is gone forth from it 

Now, made unmeet for priests to wear. 

XVII 

She treads on gods and god-like things. 
On fate and fear and life and death. 

On hate that cleaves and love that clings. 
All that is brought forth of man's breath 

And perisheth with what it brings. 



SWINBURNE'S POESiS 



XIX 

She holds her future close, her lips 
Hold fast the face of things to be; 

Actium, and sound of war that dips 
Down the blown valleys of the sea, 

For sails that flee, and storms of ships; 

XX 

The laughing, red, sweet mouth of wine 

At ending of life's festival; 
That space of cerecloths, and the fine 

White bitter dust funereal 
Sprinkled on all things for a sign. 

XXI 

His face, who was and was not he, 
In whom, alive, her life abode; 

The end, when she gained heart to see 
Those ways of death wherein she trod, 

Goddess by god, with Antony. 



A BALLAD OF LIFE 

I FOUND in dreams a place of wind and flowers. 
Full of sweet trees and color of glad grass, 
In midst whereof there was 
A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours. 
Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon 
Made my blood burn and swoon 
Like a flame rained upon. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Sorrow had filled her shaken eyelids' blue, 
And her mouth's sad red heavy rose all through 
Seemed sad with glad things gone. 

She held a little cithern by the strings, 

Shaped heartwise, strung with subtle-coiored hair 
Of some dead lute player 

That in dead years had done delicious things. 

The seven strings were named accordingly; 
The first string charity. 
The second tenderness. 

The rest were pleasure, sorrow, sleep, and sin, 

And loving kindness, that is pity's kin 
And is most pitiless. 

There were three men with her, each garmented 
With gold and shod with gold upon the feet; 
And with plucked ears of wheat. 

The first man's hair was wound upon his head: 

His face was red, and his mouth curled and sad; 
All his gold garment had 
Pale stains of dust and rust. 

A riven hood was pulled across his eyes; 

The token of him being upon this wise 
Made for a sign of Lust. 

The next was Shame, with hollow heavy face 
Colored like green wood when flame kindles it. 
He hath such feeble feet 

They may not well endure in any place. 

His face was full, grey old miseries, 
And all his blood's increase 
Was even increase of pain. 

The last was Fear, that is akin to Death; 

He is Shame's friend, and always as Shame saith 
Fear answers him again. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

My soul said in me; This is marvellous, 
Seeing the air's face is not so delicate 
Nor the sun's grace so great, 

If sin and she be kin or amorous. 

And seeing where maidens served her en their knees, 
I bade one crave of these 
To know the cause thereof. 

Then Fear said: I am Pity that was dead. 

And Shame said: I am Sorrow comforted. 
And Lust said: I am Love. 

Thereat her hands began a lute-playing 

And her sweet mouth a song in a strange tongue; 
And all the while she simg 

There was no sound but long tears following 

Long tears upon men's faces, waxen white 
With extreme delight. 

But those three following men 

Became as men raised up among the dead; 

Great glad mouths open, and fair cheeks made red 
With child's blood come again. 

Then I said: Now assuredly I see 

My lady is perfect, and transfigureth 

All sin and sorrow and death, 
Making them fair as her own eyelids be. 
Or lips wherein my whole soul's life abides; 

Or as her sweet white sides 
And bosom carved to kiss. 
Now therefore, if her pity further me, 
Doubtless for her sake all my days shall be 
As righteous as she is. 

Forth, ballad, and take roses in both arms. 

Even till the top rose touch thee in the throat 
V^ere the least thomprick harms; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

And girdled in thy golden singing-coat, 
Come thou before my lady and say this; 
Borgia, thy gold hair's color bums in me, 

Thy mouth makes beat my blood in feverish rhymes; 
Therefore so many as these roses be. 

Kiss me so many times. 
Then it may be, seeing how sweet she is, 
That she will stoop herself none otherwise 

Than a blown-vine-branch doth, 
And kiss thee with soft laughter on thine eyes. 

Ballad, and on thy mouth. 



A BALLAD OF DEATH 

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears, 

Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth 

Upon the sides of mirth, 

Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears 

Be filled with rumor of people sorrowing; 

Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs 

Upon the flesh to cleave, 

Set pains therein and many a grievous thing, 

And many sorrows after each his wise 

For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve. 

O Love's lute heard about the lands of death. 

Left hanged upon the trees that were therein; 

O Love and Time and Sin, 

Three singing mouths that mourn now under breath. 

Three lovers, each one evil spoken of; 

O smitten lips where through this voice of mine 

Came softer with her praise; 

Abide a little for our lady's love. 

The kisses of her mouth were more than wine, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

And more than peace the passage of her days. 

O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see. 

O Time, thou shalt not find in any land 

Till, cast out of thine hand, 

The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee, 

Another woman fashioned like as this. 

O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her 

Was made a goodly thing; 

Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss, 

With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier 

Than lips of amorous roses in late spring. 

By night there stood over against my bed 

Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black, 

Both sides drawn fully back 

From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red, 

And temples drained of purple and full of death. 

Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water 

And the sea's gold in it. 

Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth. 

Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her, 

And pearl and purple and amber on her feet. 

Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline 

Were painted all the secret ways of love 

And covered things thereof, 

That hold delight as grape-flowers hold, their wine; 

Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves. 

And brides that kept within the bride-chamber 

Their garment of soft shame. 

And weeping faces of the wearied loves 

That swoon in sleep and awake wearier. 

With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame. 

The tears that through her eyelids fell on me 

Made my own bitter where they ran between 

As blood had fallen therein, 



10 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see 

If any glad thing be or any good 

Now the best thing is taken forth of us; 

Even she to whom all praise 

Was as one flower in a great multitude, 

One glorious flower of many and glorious. 

One day found gracious among many days: 

Even she whose handmaiden was Love — to whom 

At kissing times across her stateliest bed 

Kings bowed themselves and shed 

Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb. 

And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering; 

Even she between whose lips the kiss became 

As fire and frankincense; 

Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king, 

Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame, 

Whose eyelids as sweet savor issuing thence. 

Then I beheld, and lo on the other side 

My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead. 

Sweet still, but now not red. 

Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died. 

And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade, 
The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes. 
And sweet, but like spoilt gold. 
The weight of color in her tresses weighed. 
And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes, 
The body that was clothed with love of old. 

Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair 

And all the hollow bosom of her gown — 

Ah! that my tears ran down 

Even to the place where many kisses were. 

Even where her parted breast-flowers have place. 

Even where they are cloven apart — who knows not this? 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS ii 

Ah! the flowers cleave apart 

And their sweet fills the tender interspace; 

Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss 

Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart. 

Ah! in the days when God did good to me, 

Each part about her was a righteous thing; 

Her mouth an almsgiving, 

The glory of her garments charity, 

The beauty of her bosom a good deed, 

In the good days when God kept sight of us; 

Love lay upon her eyes. 

And on that hair whereof the world takes heed:! 

And all her body was more virtuous 

Than souls of women fashioned otherwise. 

Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands 

And sheaves of briar and many rusted sheaves 

Rain-rotten in rank lands. 

Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves 

And grass that fades ere any of it be mown; 

And when thy bosom is filled full thereof 

Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth, 

And say "My master that was thrall to Love 

Is become thrall to Death." 

Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan, 

But make no sojourn in thy outgoing; 

For haply it may be 

That when thy feet return at evening 

Death shall come in with thee. 



12 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

LAUS VENERIS 

Asleep or waking is it? for her neck 
Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck, 

Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out; 
Soft, and stung softly — fairer for a fleck. 

But though my lips shot sucking on the place, 
There is no vein at work upon her face; 

Her eyelids are so peaceable, no doubt 
Deep sleep has warmed her blood through all its ways 

Lo, this is she that was the world's delight; 
The old grey years were parcels of her might; 
The strewings of the ways wherein she trod 
Were the twain seasons of the day and night. 

Lo, she was thus when her clear limbs enticed 
All lips that now grow sad with kissing Christ, 

Stained with blood fallen from the feet of God, 
The feet and hands whereat our souls were priced. 

Alas, Lord, surely thou are great and fair. 
But lo her wonderfully woven hair! 

And thou didst heal us with thy piteous kiss; 
But see now. Lord ; her mouth is lovelier. 

She is right fair; what hath she done to thee? 
Nay, fair Lord Christ, lift up thine eyes and see; 

Had now thy mother such a lip — like this? 
Thou knowest how sweet a thing it is to me. 

Inside the Horsel here the air is hot; 
Right little peace one hath for it, God wot; 
The scented dusty daylight burns the air, 
And my heart chokes me till I hear it not. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Behold, my Venus, my soul's body, lies 
With my love laid upon her garment-wise. 

Feeling my love in all her limbs and hair 
And shed between her eyelids through her eyes. 

She holds my heart in her sweet open hands 
Hanging asleep; hard by her head there stands, 
Crowned with gilt thorns and clothed with flesh lik^ 
fire, 
Love, wan as foam blown up the salt burnt sands — 

Hot as the brackish waifs of yellow spume 
That shift and steam — loose clots of arid fume 
From the sea's panting mouth of dry desire; 
There stands he, like one laboring at a loom. 

The warp holds fast across; and every thread 
That makes the woof up has dry specks of red; 

Always the shuttle cleaves clean through, and he 
Weaves with the hair of many a ruined head. 

Love is not glad nor sorry, as I deem; 
Laboring he dreams, and labors in the dream, 

Till when the spool is finished, lo I see 
His web, reeled off, curls and goes out like steam. 

Night falls like fire; the heavy lights run low, 
And as they drop, my blood and body so 

Shake as the flame shakes, full of days and hours 
That sleep not neither weep they as they go. 

Ah yet would God this flesh of mine might be 
Where air might wash and long leaves cover me, 
Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers, 
Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea. 



13 



14 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Ah yet would God that stems and roots were bred 
Out of my weary body and my head, 

That sleep were sealed upon me with a seal, 
And I were as the least of all his dead. 

Would God my blood were dew to feed the grass. 
Mine ears made deaf and mine eyes blind as glass, 

My bod}^ broken as a turning wheel, 
And my mouth stricken ere it saith Alas! 

Ah God, that love were as a flower or flame. 
That life were as the naming of a name, 

That death were not more pitiful than desire. 
That these things were not one thing and the same! 

Behold now, surely somewhere there is death; 
For each man hath some space of years, he saith. 

A little space of time ere time expire, 
A little day, a little way of breath. 

And lo, between the sundawn and the sun. 

His day's work and his night's work are undone; 

And lo, between the nightfall and the light. 
He is not, and none knoweth of such an one. 



As God, that I were as all souls that be, 
As any herb or leaf of any tree, 

As men that toil through hours of laboring night, 
As bones of men under the deep sharp sea. 

Outside it must be winter among men; 
For at the gold bars of the gates again 

I heard all night and all the hours of it. 
The wind's wet wings and fingers drip with rain. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 1 5 

Knights gather, riding sharp for cold; I know 
The ways and woods are strangled with the snow; 
And with short song the maidens spin and sit 
Until Christ's birthnight, lily-like, arow. 

The scent and shadow shed about me make 
The very soul in all my senses ache; 

The hot hard night is fed upon my breath, 
And sleep beholds me from afar awake. 

Alas, but surely where the hills grow deep, 
Or where the wild ways of the sea are steep, 

Or in strange places somewhere there is death, 
And on death's face the scattered hair of sleep. 

There lover-like with lips and limbs that meet 
They lie, they pluck sweet fruit of life and eat; 

But me the hot and hungry days devour, 
And in my mouth no fruit of theirs is sweet. 

No fruit of theirs, but fruit of my desire. 

For her love's sake whose lips through mine respire; 

Her eyelids on her eyes like flower on flower, 
Mine eyelids on mine eyes like fire on fire. 

So lie we, not as sleep that lies by deaths 
With heavy kisses and with happy breath; 

Not as man lies by woman, when the bride 
Laughs low for love's sake and the words he saith. 

For she lies, laughing low with love; she lies 
And turns his kisses on her lips to sighs, 
To sighing sound of lips unsatisfied. 
And the sweet tears are tender with her eyes. 



1 6 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Ah, not as they, but as the souls that were 
Slain in the old time, having found her fair; 

Who, sleeping with her lips upon their eyes, 
Heard sudden serpents hiss across her hair. 

Their blood runs round the roots of time like rain: 
She casts them forth and gathers them again; 

With nerve and bone she weaves and multiplies 
Exceeding pleasure out of extreme pain. 

Her little chambers drip with fiower-like red, 
Her girdles, and the chaplets of her head. 

Her armlets and her anklets; with her feet. 
She tramples all that winepress of the dead. 

Her gateways smoke with fume of flowers and fires. 
With loves burnt out and unassuaged desires; 

Between her lips the steam of them is sweet. 
The langor in her ears of many lyres. 

Her beds are full of perfume and sad sound, 
Her doors are made with music and barred round 
With sighing and with laughter and with tears, 
With tears whereby strong souls of men are bound. 

There is the knight Adonis that was slain. 
With flesh and blood she chains him for a chain; 

The body and the spirit in her ears 
Cry, for her lips divide him vein by vein. 

Yea, all she slayeth; yea, every man save me; 
Me, love, thy lover that must cleave to thee 

Till the ending of the days and ways of earth, 
The shaking of the sources of the sea. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Me, most forsaken of all souls that fell; 
Me, satiated with things insatiable; 

Me, for whose sake the extreme hell makes mirth, 
Yea, laughter kindles at the heart of hell. 

Alas thy beauty! for thy mouth's sweet sake 
My soul is bitter to me, my limbs quake 
As water, as the flesh of men that weep, 
As their heart's vein whose heart goes nigh to break. 

Ah God, that sleep with flower-sweet finger-tips 
Would crush the fruit of death upon my lips; 
Ah, God, that death would tread the grapes of 
sleep 
And wring their juice upon me as it drips. 

There is no change of cheer for many days, 

But change of chimes high up in the air, that sways 

Rung by the running fingers of the wind; 
And singing sorrows heard on hidden ways. 

Day smiteth day in twain, night sundereth night. 
And on mine eyes the dark sits as the light; 

Yea, Lord, thou knowest I know not, having sinned, 
If heaven be clean or imclean in thy sight. 

Yea, as if earth were sprinkled over me, 

Such chafed harsh earth as chokes a sandy sea, 

Each pore doth yearn, and the dried blood thereof 
Gasps by sick fits, my heart swims heavily. 

There is a feverish famine in my veins; 

Below her bosom, where a crushed grape stains 

The white and blue, there my lips caught and clove 
An hour since, and what mark of me remains? 



17 



i8 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

I dare not always touch her, lest the kiss 
Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss, 

Brief bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin; 
Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is. 

Sin, is it sin whereby men's souls are thrust 
Into the pit? yet had I a good trust 

To save my soul before it slipped therein, 
Trod under by the fire-shod feet of lust. 

For if mine eyes fail and my soul takes breath, 
I look between the iron sides of death 

Into sad hell where all sweet love hath end. 
All but the pain that never finisheth. 

There are the naked faces of great kings. 
The singing folk with all their lute-playings; 

There when one cometh he shall have to friend 
The grave that covets and the worm that clings. 

There sit the knights that were so great of hand, 
The ladies that were queens of fair green land, 

Grown grey and black now, brought unto the dust, 
Soiled, without raiment, clad about with sand. 

There is one end for all of them; they sit 
Naked and sad, they drink the dregs of it. 

Trodden as grapes in the wine-press of lust. 
Trampled and trodden by the fiery feet. 

I see the marvellous mouth whereby there fell 
Cities and people whom the gods loved well. 
Yet for her sake on them the fire gat hold, 
And for their sakes on her the fire of hell. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 19 

And softer than the Egyptian lote-leaf is, 

The queen whose face was worth the world to kiss, 

Wearing at breast a suckling snake of gold; 
And large pale lips of strong Semiramis. 

Curled like a tiger's that curl back to feed; 
Red only where the last kiss made them bleed; 

Her hair most thick with many a carven gem, 
Deep in the mane, great-chested, like a steed. 

Yea, with red sin the faces of them shine; 
But in all these there was no sin like mine; 

No, not in all the strange great sins of them 
That made the wine-press froth and foam with wine. 

For I was of Christ's choosing, I God's knight, 
No blinkard heathen stumbling for scant light; 

I can well see, for all the dusty days 
Gone past, the clean great time of goodly fight. 

I smell the breathing battle sharp with blows. 
With shriek of shafts and snapping short of bows; 
The fair pure sword smites out in subtle ways, 
Sounds and long lights are shed between the rows 

Of beautiful mailed men; the edged light slips. 
Most like a snake that takes short breath and dips 

Sharp from the beautifully bending head, 
With all its gracious body lithe as lips 

That curl in touching you; right in this wise 
My sword doth, seeming fire in mine own eyes, 

Leaving all colors in them brown and red 
And flecked with death ; then the keen breaths like 
sighs, 



20 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

The caught-up choked dry laughters following them, 
When all the fighting face is grown a flame 

For pleasure, and the pulse that stims the ears, 
And the heart's gladness of the goodly game. 

Let me think yet a Rttle; I do know 

These things were sweet, but sweet such years ago, 

Their savor is all turned now into tears; 
Yea, ten years since, where the blue ripples blow, 

The blue curled eddies of the blowing Rhine, 
I felt the sharp wind shaking grass and vine 

Touch my blood, too, and sting me with delight 
Through all this waste and weary body of mine 

That never feels clear air; right gladly then 
I rode alone, a great way off my men, 

And heard the chiming bridle smite and smite. 
And gave each rhyme thereof some rhyme again. 

Till my song shifted to that iron one; 
Seeing there rode up between me and the sun 
Some certain of my foe's men, for his three 
White wolves across their painted coats did nm. 

The first red-bearded, with square cheeks — alack, 
I made my knave's blood turn his beard to black; 

The slaying of him was a joy to see: 
Perchance, too, when at night he came not back. 

Some woman fell a-weeping, whom this thief 
Would beat when he had drunken ; yet small grief 

Hath any for the ridding of such knaves; 
Yea, if one wept, I doubt her teen was brief. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 2i 

This bitter love is sorrow in all lands, 
Draining of eyelids, wringing of drenched hands, 

Sighing of hearts and filling up of graves; 
A sign across the head of the world he stands, 

As one that hath a plague-mark on his brows; 
Dust and spilt blood do track him to his house 

Down under earth; sweet smells of lip and cheek, 
Like a sweet snake's breath made more poisonous 

With chewing of some perfumed deadly grass. 
Are shed all round his passage if he pass. 

And their quenched savor leaves the whole soul 
weak, 
Sick with keen guessing whence the perfume was. 

As one who hidden in deep sedge and reeds 
Smells the rare scent made where a panther feeds, 

And tracking ever slotwise the warm smell 
Is snapped upon by the sweet mouth and bleeds, 

His head far down the hot sweet throat of her — 
So one tracks love, whose breath is deadlier, 

And lo, one springe and you are fast in hell, 
Fast as the gin's grip of a wayfarer. 

I think now, as the heavy hours decease 
One after one, and bitter thoughts increase 

One upon one, of all sweet finished things; 
The breaking of the battle; the long peace 

Wherein we sat clothed softly, each man's hair 
Crowned with green leaves beneath white hoods of 
vair; 
The sounds of sharp spears at great tourneyings, 
And noise of singing in the late sweet air. 



22 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

I sang of love too, knowing nought thereof; 
"Sweeter," I said, "the little laugh of love 
Than tears out of the eyes of Magdalen, 
Or any fallen feather of the Dove. 

"The broken little laugh that spoils a kiss, 
The ache of purple pulses, and the bliss 

Of blinded eyelids that expand again — 
Love draws them open with those lips of his, 

"Lips that cling hard till the kissed face has grown 
Of one same fire and color with their own; 

Then ere one sleep, appeased with sacrifice. 
Where his lips wounded, there his lips atone." 

I sang these things long since and knew them not; 
"Lo, here is love, or there is love, God wot. 

This man and that finds favor in his eyes," 
I said, "but I, what guerdon have I got? 

"The dust of praise that is blown ever5rwhere 
In all men's faces with the common air; 

The bay-leaf that wants chafing to be sweet 
Before they wind it in a singer's hair." 

So that one dawn I rode forth sorrowing; 
I had no hope but of some evil thing. 

And so rode slowly past the windy wheat. 
And past the vineyard and the water-spring. 

Up to the Horsel. A great elder- tree 
Held back its heaps of flowers to let me see 

The ripe tall grass, and one that walked therein, 
Naked, with hair shed over to the knee. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 23 

She walked between the blossom and the grass; 
I knew the beauty of her, what she was, 

The beauty of her body and her sin, 
And in my flesh the sin of hers, alas! 

Alas! for sorrow is all the end of this. 
O sad kissed mouth, how sorrowful it is! 

O breast whereat some suckling sorrow clings, 
Red with the bitter blossom of a kiss! 



Ah, with blind lips I felt for you, and found 
About my neck your hands and hair enwound, 

The hands that stifle and the hair that stings, 
I felt them fasten sharply without sound. 

Yea, for my sin I had great store of bliss 
Rise up, make answer for me, let thy kiss 

Seal my lips hard from speaking of my sin. 
Lest one go mad to hear how sweet it is. 

Yet I waxed faint with fume of barren bowers, 
And murmuring of the heavy-headed hours; 

And let the dove's beak fret and peck within 
My lips in vain, and Love shed fruitless flowers. 

So that God looked upon me when your hands 
Were hot about me; yea, God brake my bands 

To save my soul alive, and I came forth 
Like a man blind and naked in strange lands 

That hears men laugh and weep, and knows not whence 
Nor wherefore, but is broken in his sense; 

Howbeit I met folk riding from the north 
Towards Rome, to purge them of their souls' offence. 



24 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

And rode with them, and spake to none; the day 
Stunned me like lights upon some wizard way, 

And ate like fire mine eyes and mine eyesight; 
So rode I, hearing all these chant and pray, 

And marvelled; till before us rose and fell 
White cursed hills, like outer skirts of hell 
Seen where men's eyes look through the day to 
night. 
Like a jagged shell's lips, harsh, untunable. 

Blown in between by devils' wrangling breath; 
Nathless we won well past that hell and death, 

Down to the sweet land where all airs are good, 
Even unto Rome where God's grace tarrieth. 

Then came each man and worshipped at his knees 
Who in the Lord God's likeness bears the keys 

To bind or loose, and called on Christ's shed blood, 
And so the sweet-souled father gave him ease. 

But when I came I fell down at his feet. 
Saying, "Father, though the Lord's blood be right 
sweet. 
The spot it takes not off the panther's skin, 
Nor shall an Ethiop's stain be bleached with it. 

^*Xo, I have sinned and have spat out at God, 
Wherefore his hand is heavier and his rod 

More sharp because of mine exceeding sin. 
And all his raiment redder than bright blood 

"Before mine eyes; yea, for my sake I wot 
The heat of hell is waxen seven times hot 
Through my great sin." Then spake he some 
sweet word. 
Giving me cheer; which thing availed me not; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 25 

Yea, scarce I wist if such indeed were said; 
For when I ceased — lo, as one newly dead 

Who hears a great cry out of hell, I heard 
The crying of his voice across my head. 

"Until this dry shred staff, that hath no whit 
Of leaf nor bark, bear blossom and smell sweet. 
Seek thou not any mercy in God's sight 
For so long shalt thou be cast out from it." 

Yea, what if dried-up stems wax red and green. 
Shall that thing be which is not nor has been? 

Yea, what if sapless bark was green and white. 
Shall any good fruit grow upon my sin? 

Nay, though sweet fruit were plucked of a dry tree, 
And though men drew sweet waters of the sea, 
There should not grow sweet leaves on this dead 
stem. 
This waste wan body and shaken soul of me. 

Yea, though God search it warily enough. 
There is not one sound thing in all thereof; 
Though he search all my veins through, searching 
them 
He shall find nothing whole therein but love. 

For I came home right heavy, with small cheer. 
And lo my love, mine own soul's heart, more dear 
Than mine own soul, more beautiful than God, 
Who hath my being between the hands of her — 

Fair still, but fair for no man saving me. 
As when she came out of the naked sea 

Making the foam as fire whereon she trod. 
And as the inner flower of fire was she. 



26 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Yea, she laid hold upon me, and her mouth 
Clove unto mine as soul to body doth, 

And, laughing, made her lips luxurious; 
Her hair had smells of all the sunburnt south. 

Strange spice and flower, strange savor of crushed 

fruit 
And perfume the swart kings tread underfoot 
For pleasure when their minds wax amorous, 
Charred frankincense and grated sandal-root. 

And I forgot fear and all weary things. 

All ended prayers and perished thanksgivings, 

Feeling her face with all her eager hair 
Cleave to me, clinging as a fire that clings 

To the body and to the raiment, burning them; 
As after death I know that such-like flame 

Shall cleave to me for ever; yea, what care. 
Albeit I burn then, having felt the same? 

Ah love, there is no better life than this; 
To have known love, how bitter a thing it is. 

And afterward be cast out of God's sight; 
Yea, these that know not, shall they have such bliss 

High up in barren heaven before his face 
As we twain in the heavy-hearted place. 

Remembering love and all the dead delight. 
And all that time was sweet with for a space? 

For till the thunder in the trumpet be, 
Soul may divide from body, but not we 

One from another; I hold thee with my hand, 
I let mine eyes have all their will of thee, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 27 

I seal myself upon thee with my might, 
Abiding alway out of all men's sight 

Until God loosen over sea and land 
The thunder of the trumpets of the night. 

EXPLICIT LAUS VENERIS. 



THE TRIUMPH OF TIME. 

Before our lives divide for ever, 
While time is with us and hands are free, 

(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever 
Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea) 

I will say no word that a man might say 

Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; 

For this could never have been; and never. 
Though the gods and the years relent, shall be^ 

Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour. 
To think of things that are well outworn? 

Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower. 

The dream foregone and the deed forborne? 

Though joy be done with and grief be vain, 

Time shall not sever us wholly in twain; 

Earth is not spoilt for a single shower; 

But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn. 

It will grow not again, this fruit of my heart, 
Smitten with sunbeams, ruined with rain. 

The singing seasons divide and depart 
Winter and summer depart in twain. 

It will grow not again, it is ruined at root, 

The bloodlike blossom, the dull red fruit; 

Though the heart yet sickens, the lips yet smart, 
With sullen savor of poisonous pain. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

I have given no man of my fruit to eat; 

I trod the graves, I have drunken the wine. 
Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet, 

This wild new growth of the corn and vine, 
This wine and bread without lees or leaven. 
We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven, 
Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet. 

One splendid spirit, your soul and mine. 

In the change of years, in the coil of things, 

In the clamor and rumor of life to be 
We, drinking love as the furthest springs, 

Covered with love at a covering tree. 
We had grown as gods, as the gods above. 
Filled from the heart to the lips with love, 
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings, 
O love, my love had you loved but me! 

We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved 
As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen 

Grief collapse as a thing disproved, 
Death consume as a thing unclean. 

Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast. 

Soul to soul while the years fell past; 

Had you loved me once, as you have not loved; 
Had the chance been with us that has not been. 

I have put my days and dreams out of mind. 
Days that are over, dreams that are done. 
Though we seek life through, we shall surely find 

There is none of them clear to us now, not one. 
But clear are these things; the grass and the sand. 
Where, sure as the eyes reach, ever at hand. 
With lips wide open and face burnt blind. 
The strong sea-daisies feast on the sun. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

The low downs lean to the sea; the stream, 
One loose thin pulseless tremulous vein, 

Rapid and vivid and dumb as a dream, 
Works downward, sick of the sun and the rain; 

No wind is rough with the rank rare flowers; 

The sweet sea, mother of loves and hours. 

Shudders and shines as the grey winds gleam, 
Turning her smile to a fugitive pain. 

Mother of loves that are swift to fade. 
Mother of mutable winds and hours. 
A barren mother, a mother-msiid, 

Cold and clean as her faint salt flowers. 
I would we twain were even as she, 
Lost in the night and the light of the sea. 
Where faint sounds falter and wan beams wade, 
Break, and are broken, and shed into showers. 

The loves and hours of the life of a man. 

They are swift and sad, being bom of the sea. 

Hours that rejoice and regret for a span. 
Bom with a man's breath, mortal as he; 

Loves that are lost ere they come to birth, 

Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth. 

I lose what I long for, save what I can, 
My love, my love, and no love for me! 

It is not much that a man can save 

On the sands of life, in the straits of time, 

Who swims in sight of the great third wave 
That never a swimmer shall cross or climb. 

Some waif washed up with the strays and spars 

That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars; 

Weed from the water, grass from a grave. 
A broken blossom, a ruined rh5mie, 



29 



30 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

There will no man do for your sake, I think, 

What I would have done for the least word said. 
I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink. 

Broken it up for your daily bread: 
Body for body and blood for blood, 
As the flow of the full sea risen to flood 
That yearns and trembles before it sink, 

I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead. 

Yea, hope at highest and all her fruit, 
And time at fullest and all his dower, 

I had given you surely, and life to boot. 
Were we once made one for a single hour. 

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart. 

Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart; 

And deep in one is the bitter root. 

And sweet for one is the lifelong flower. 

To have died if you cared I should die for you, clung 
To my life if you bade me, played my part 

As it pleased you — these were the thoughts that stung, 
The dreams that smote with a keener dart 

Than shafts of love or arrows of death; 

These were but as fire is, J/"t or breath. 

Or poisonous foam on the tender tongue 
Of the little snakes that eat my heart. 

I wish we were dead together to-day, 
Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight. 

Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay, 
Out of the world's way, out of the light, 

Out of the ages of worldly weather. 

Forgotten of all men altogether. 

As the world's first dead, taken wholly away. 
Made one with death, filled full of the night. 



31 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

How we should slumber, how we should sleep, 
Far in the dark with the dreams and the dews! 

And dreaming, grow to each other, and weep, 
Laugh low, live softly, murmur and muse; 

Yea, and it may be, struck through by the dream, 

Feel the dust quicken and quiver, and seem 

Alive as of old to the lips, and leap 
Spirit to spirit as lovers use. 

Sick dreams and sad of a dull delight; 

For what shall it profit when men are dead 
To have dreamed, to have loved with the whole soul's 
might. 

To have looked for day when the day was fled? 
Let come what will, there is one thing worth, 
To have had fair love in the life upon earth: 
To have held love safe till the day grew night, 

'While skies had color and lips were red. 

Would I lose you now? would I take you then, 

If I lose you now that my heart has need? 
And come what may after death to men, 

What thing worth this will the dee i years breed? 
Lose life, lose all; but at least I know, 
O sweet life's love, having loved you so. 
Had I reached you on earth, I should lose not again. 
In death nor life, nor in dream or deed. 

Yea, I know this well: were you once sealed mine. 
Mine in the blood's beat, mine in the breath. 

Mixed into me as honey in wine, 

Not time that sayeth and gainsayeth, 

Nor all strong things had severed us then; 

Not wrath of gods, nor Avisdom of men, 

Nor all things earthly, nor all divine, 
Nor joy nor sorrow, nor life nor death. 



32 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew, 
You had grown strong as the sun or the sea. 

But none shall triumph a whole life through: 
For death is one, and the fates are three. 

At the door of life, by the gate of breath, 

There are v/orse things waiting for men than death; 

Death could not sever my soul and you, 
As these have severed your soul from me. 

You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you, 

Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer. 
But will it not one day in heaven repent you? 

Will they solace you wholly, the days that were? 
Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss. 
Meet mine and see where the great love is, 
And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you; 
The gate is strait; I shall not be there. 

But you, had you chosen, had you stretched hand; 

Had you seen good such a thing were done, 
I too might have stood with the souls that stand 

In the sun's sight, clothed with the light of the sun ; 
But who now on earth need care how I live? 
Have the high gods anything left to give, 
Save dust and laurels and gold and sand? 

Which gifts are goodly; but I will none. 

O all fair lovers about the world, 

There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me. 
IVfy thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled 

Round and round in a gulf of the sea; 
And still, through the sound and the straining stream, 
Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream. 
The bright fine lips so cruelly curled. 

And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Free, without pity, withheld from woe. 

Ignorant; fair as the eyes are fair. 
Would I have you change now, change at a blow, 

Startled and stricken, awake and aware? 
Yea, if I could, would I have you see 
My very love of you filling me, 
And know my soul to the quick, as I know 

The likeness and look of your throat and hair? 

I shall not change you. Nay, though I might. 
Would I change my sweet one love with a word? 

I had rather your hair should change in a night. 
Clear now as the plume of a black bright bird; 

Your face fail suddenly, cease, turn grey. 

Die as a leaf that dies in a day. 

I will keep my soul in a place out of sight. 
Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard. 

Far off it walks, in a bleak blown space. 
Full of the sound of the sorrow of years. 

I have woven a veil for the weeping face. 
Whose lips have drunken the wine of tears; 

I have found a way for the failing feet, 

A place for slumber and sorrow to meet; 

There is no rumor about the place. 
Nor light, nor any that sees or hears. 

I have hidden my soul out of sight, and said 

"Let none take pity upon thee, none 
Comfort thy crying: for lo, thou art dead. 

Lie still now, safe out of sight of the sim. 
Have I not built thee a grave, and wrought 
Thy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought 
With soft spun verses and tears unshed. 
And sweet light visions of things undone? 



33 



34 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

"I have given thee garments and balm and myrrh, 
And gold, and beautiful burial things. 

But thou, be at peace now, make no stir; 
Is not thy grave as a royal king's? 

Fret not thyself though the end were sore; 

Sleep, be patient, vex me no more. 

Sleep; what hast thou to do with her? 
The eyes that weep, with the mouth that sings?" 

Where the dead red leaves of the years lie rotten. 

The cold old crimes and the deeds thrown by. 
The misconceived and the misbegotten, 

I would find a sin to do ere I die, 
Sure to dissolve and destroy me all through, 
That would set you higher in heaven, serve you 
And leave you happy, when clean forgotten, 
As a dead man out of mind, am I. 

Your lithe hands draw me, your face burns through me, 
I am swift to follow you, keen to see; 

But love lacks might to redeem or undo me, 
As I have been, I know I shall surely be; 

"What should such fellows as I do?" Nay, 

My part were worse if I chose to play; 

For the worst is this after all ; if they knew me. 
Not a soul upon earth would pity me. 

And I play not for pity of these; but you, 

If you saw with your soul what man am I, 
You would praise me at least that my soul all through 

Clove to you, loathing the lives that lie; 
The souls and lips that are bought and sold, 
The smiles of silver and kisses of gold. 
The lapdog loves that whine as they chew. 
The little lovers that curse and cry. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS Q 



35 



There are fairer women, I hear; that may be. 

But I, that I love you and find you fair, 
Who are more than fair in my eyes if they be. 

Do the high gods know or the great gods care? 
Though the swords in my heart for one were seven, 
Would the iron hollow of doubtful heaven, 
That knov/s not itself whether night-time or day be, 
Reverberate words and a foolish prayer? 

I will go back to the great sweet mother. 

Mother and lover of men, the sea. 
I will go down to her, I and none other. 

Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me; 
Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast; 
O fair white mother, in days long past 
Born without sister, born without brother, 

Set free my soul as thy soul is free. 

fair green-girdled mother of mine. 

Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, 
Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine, 

Thy large embraces are keen like pain. 
Save me and hide me with all thy waves. 
Find me one grave of thy thousand graves. 
Those pure cold populous graves of thine. 

Wrought without hand in a world without stain. 

1 shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, 

Change as the winds change, veer in the tide; 
My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips, 

I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside; 
Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were. 
Filled full with life to the eyes and hair, 
As a rose is fulfilled to the roseleaf tips 

With sDlendid summer and perfume and pride. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

This woven raiment of nights and days, 

Were it once cast off and unwound from me, 
Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways, 

Alive and aware of thy ways and thee; 
Clear of the whole world, hidden at home. 
Clothed with the green and crowned with the foam, 
A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays, 
A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea. 

Fair mother, fed with the lives of men. 
Thou art subtle and cruel of heart, men say 

Thou hast taken, and shalt not render again ; 
Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they. 

But death is the worst that comes of thee; 

Thou art fed with our dead, O mother, O sea, 

But v/hen hast thou fed on our hearts? or when. 
Having given us love, hast thou taken away? 

O tender-hearted, O perfect lover. 

Thy lips are bitter, and sweet thine heart. 

The hopes that hurt and the dreams that hover. 
Shall they not vanish away and apart? 

But thou, thou art sure, thou art older than earth; 

Thou art strong for death and fruitful of birth ; 

Thy depths conceal and thy gulfs discover; 
From the first thou wert; in the end thou art. 

And grief shall endure not for ever, I know. 

As things that are not shall these things be; 
We shall live through seasons of sun and of snow, 

And none be grievous as this to me. 
We shall hear, as one in a trance that hears, 
The sound of time, the rhyme of the years; 
Wrecked hope and passionate pain will grow 

As tender things of a springf-tide sea. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 3^ 

Sea-fruit that swings in the waves that hiss, 
Drowned gold and purple and royal rings, 
And all time past, was it all for this? 

Times unforgotten, and treasures of things? 
Swift years of liking, and sweet long laughter, 
That wist not well of the years thereafter 
Till love woke, smitten at heart by a kiss, 
With lips that trembled and trailing wings? 

There lived a singer in France of old, 

By the tideless dolorous midland sea. 
In a land of sand and ruin and gold 

There shone one woman, and none but she. 
And finding life for her love's sake fail. 
Being fain to see her, he bade set sail, 
Touched land, and saw her as life grew cold. 

And praised God, seeing; and so died he. 

Died, praising God for his gift and grace: 

For she bowed down to him weeping, and said 
''Live;" and her tears were shed on his face 

Or ever the life in his face was shed. 
The sharp tears fell through her hair, and stung 
Once, and her close lips touched him and clung 
Once, and grew one with his lips for a space; 
And so drew back, and the man was dead. 

O brother, the gods were good to you. 

Sleep, and be glad while the world endures. 
Be well content as the years wear through; 

Give thanks for life, and the loves and lures; 
Give thanks for life, O brother, and death. 
For the sweet last sound of her feet, her breath. 
For gifts she gave you, gracious and few, 

Tears and kisses, that lady of yours. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Rest and be glad of the gods; but I, 
How shall I praise them, or how take rest? 

There is not room under all the sky 
For me that know not of worst or best, 

Dream or desire of the days before, 

Sweet things or bitterness, any more. 

Love will not come to me now though I die, 
As love came close to you, breast to breast. 

I shall never be friends again with roses; 

I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong 
Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes, 

As a wave of the sea turned back by song. 
There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire. 
Face to face with its own desire; 
A delight that rebels, a desire that reposes, 

I shall hate sweet music my whole life long. 

The pulse of war and passion of wonder, 

The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine, 
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder. 
The music burning at heart like wine. 
An armed archangel whose hands raise up 
All senses mixed up in the spirit's cup 
Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder — 
These things are over, and no more mine. 

These were a part of the playing I heard 
Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife; 

Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, 
Balm of the wound and heft of the knife. 

Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep 

Than overwatching of eyes that weep, 

Now time has done with his one sweet word. 
The wine and leaven of lovelv life. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

I shall go my ways, tread out my measure, 

Fill the days of my daily breath 
With fugitive things not good to treasure, 

Do as the world doth, say as it saith; 
But if we had loved each other — O sweet, 
Had you felt, lying under the palms of your feet, 
The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure 

To feel you tread it to dust and death — 

Ah, had I not taken my life up and given 

All that life gives and the years let go. 
The wine and honey, the balm and leaven, 

The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low? 
Come life, come death, not a word be said; 
Should I lose you living, and vex you dead? 
I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven 

If I cry to you then, will you hear or know? 



39 



LES NOYADES. 

Whatever a man of the sons of men 
Shall say to his heart of the lords above. 

They have shown man verily, once and again, 
Marvellous mercies and infinite love. 

In the wild fifth year of the change of things. 
When France was glorious and blood-red, fair 

With dust of battle and deaths of kings, 
A queen of men, with helmeted hair; 

Carrier came down to the Loire and slew. 
Till all the ways and the waves waxed red: 

Bound and drowned, slaying two by two, 
Maidens and young men, naked and wed. 



40 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

They brought on a day to his judgment-place 
One rough with labor and red with fight, 

And a lady noble by name and face, 
Faultless, a maiden, wonderful, white. 

She knew not, being for shame's sake blind. 
If his eyes were hot on her face hard by. 

And the judge bade strip and ship them, and bind 
Bosom to bosom to drown and die. 

The white girl winced and whitened; but he 
Caught fire, waxed bright as a great bright flame 

Seen with thunder far out on the sea, 

Laughed hard as the glad blood went and came. 

Twice his lips quailed with delight, then said, 
"I have but a word to you all, one word. 

Bear with me; surely I am but dead;" 

And all they laughed and mocked him and heard. 

"Judge, when they open the judgment-roll, 
I will stand upright before God and pray: 

^Lord God, have mercy on one man's soul, 
For his mercy was great upon earth, I say. 

" 'Lord, if I loved thee — Lord, if I served — 
If these who darkened thy Son's fair face 

I fought with, sparing not one, nor swerved 
A hand's-breadth, Lord, in the perilous place — 

" 'I pray thee say to this man, O Lord, 
Sit thou for him at my feet on a throne. 

I will face thy wrath, though it bite as a sword. 
And my soul shall burn for his soul and atone. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 41 

" 'For Lord, thou knowest, O God most wise, 

How gracious on earth were his deeds toward me. 

Shall this be a small thing in thine eyes. 

That is greater in mine than the whole great sea?' 

"I have loved this woman my whole life long, 
And even for love's sake when have I said 

*I love you?' when have I done you wrong, 
Living? but now I shall have you dead. 

"Yea, now, do I bid you love me, love? 

Love me or loathe, we are one not twain. 
But God be praised in his heaven above 

For this my pleasure and that my pain! 

"For never a man, being mean like me. 
Shall die like me till the whole world dies. 

I shall drown with her, laughing for love; and she 
Mix with me, touching me, lips and eyes. 

"Shall she not know me and see me all through, 
Me, on whose heart as a worm she trod? 

You have given me, God requite it you, 
What man yet never was given of God." 

sweet one love, O my life's delight. 
Dear, though the days have divided us. 

Lost beyond hope, taken far out of sight. 

Not twice in the world shall the gods do thus? 

Had it been so hard for my love? but I, 

Though the gods gave all that a god can give, 

1 had chosen rather the gift to die. 
Cease, and be glad above all that live. 



42 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

For the Loire would have driven us down to the sea, 
And the sea would have pitched us from shoal to shoal; 

And I should have held you, and you held me, 
As flesh holds flesh, and the soul the soul. 

Could I change you, help you to love me, sweet, 
Could I give you the love that would sweeten death, 

We should yield, go down, locked hands and feet. 
Die, drown together, and breath catch breath; 

But you would have felt my soul in a kiss, 
And known that once if I loved you well; 

And I would have given my soul for this 
To burn for ever in burning hell 



A LEAVE-TAKING 

Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear. 
Let us go hence together without fear; 
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over 
And over all old things and all things dear. 
She loves not you nor me as all we love her. 
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear, 
She would not hear. 

Let us rise up and part; she will not know. 
Let us go seaward as the great winds go, 
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is there? 
There is no help, for all these things are so. 
And all the world is bitter as a tear. 
^nd how these things are, though ye strove to show. 
She would not know. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 43 

Let us go home and hence; she will not weep, 
We gave love many dreams and days to keep, 
Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow, 
Saying, "If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap." 
All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow; 
And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep, 
She would not weep. 

Let us go hence and rest; she will not love. 
She shall not hear us if we sing hereof, 
Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep. 
Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough. 
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep; 
And though she saw all heaven in flower above. 
She would not love. 

Let us give up, go down; she will not care. 
Though all the stars made gold of all the air. 
And the sea moving saw before it move 
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair; 
Though all those waves went over us, and drove 
Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair 
She would not care. 

Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see. 

Sing all once more together: surely she. 

She too, remembering days and words that were, 

Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we. 

We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been 

there. 
Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me, 
She would not see. 



44 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

ITYLUS. 

Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, 
How can thine heart be full of the spring? 
A thousand summers are over and dead. 
What hast thou found in the spring to follow? 
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? 
What wilt thou do when tlie summer is shed? 

swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow, 

Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south, 
The soft south whither thine heart is set? 
Shall not the grief of the old time follow? 

Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth? 
Hast thou forgotten ere I forget? 

Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow, 
Thy way is long to the sun and the south; 
But I, fulfilled of my heart's desire. 
Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow, 
From tawny body and sweet small mouth 
Feed the heart of the night with fire. 

1 the nightingale all spring through, 

O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow. 
All spring through till the spring be done. 
Clothed with the light of the night on the dew. 

Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow. 
Take flight and follow and find the sun. 

Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow. 

Though all things feast in the spring's guest-chamber. 
How hast thou heart to be glad there of yet? 
For where thou fliest I shall not follow. 
Till life forget and death remember, 
Till thou remember and I forget. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow, 
I know not how thou hast heart to sing. 
Hast thou the heart? is it all past over? 
Thy lord the summer is good to follow. 
And fair the feet of thy lover the spring: 

But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover? 

O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow. 
My heart in me is a molten ember 

And over my head the waves have met. 
But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow, 
Could I forget or thou remember, 
Couldst thou remember and I forget. 

O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow 
The heart's division divideth us. 
Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree; 
But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow 
To the place of the slaying of Itylus, 
The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea. 

O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow, 
I pray thee sing not a little space. 
Are not the roofs and the lintels wet? 
The woven web that was plain to follow, 
The small slain body, the flower-like face. 
Can I remember if thou forget? 

O sister, sister, thy first-begotten! • 

The hands that cling and the feet that follow, 
The voice of the child's blood crying yet 
Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten? 
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow. 
But the world shall end when I forget. 



45 



46 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



ANACTORIA. 

INIy life is bitter with thy love; thine eyes 

Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs 

Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound. 

And my blood strengthens, and my veins abound. 

I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath; 

Let life burn down, and dream it is not death. 

I would the sea had hidden us, the fire 

(Wilt thou ^ear that, and fear not my desire?) 

Severed the bones that bleach, the flesh that cleaves, 

And let our sifted ashes drop like leaves. 

I feel thy blood against my blood: my pain 
Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein. 
Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower, 
Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour. 
A\Tiy wilt thou follow lesser loves? are thine 
Too weak to bear these hands and lips of mine? 
I charge thee for my life's sake, O too sweet 
To crush love with thy cruel faultless feet, 
I charge thee keep thy lips from hers or his, 
Sweetest, till theirs be sweeter than my kiss. 

Lest I too lure, a swallow for a dove, 

Erotion or Erinna to my love. 

I would my love could kill thee; I am satiated 

With seeing thee live, and fain would have thee dead. 

I would earth had thy body as fruit to eat, 

And no mouth but some serpent's found thee sweet. 

I would find grievous ways to have thee slain, 

Intense device, and superflux of pain; 

Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake 

J-ife at thy lips, and leave it there to ache: 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Strain out thy soul with pangs too soft to kill, 

Intolerable interludes, and infinite ill; 

Relapse and reluctation of the breath, 

Dumb tunes and shuddering semitones of death. 

I am weary of all thy words and soft strange ways, 

Of all love's fiery nights and all his days, 

And all the broken kisses salt as brine 

That shuddering lips make moist with waterish wine, 

And eyes the bluer for all those hidden hours 

That pleasure fills with tears and feeds from flowers. 

Fierce at the heart with fire that half comes through, 

But all the flower-like white-stained round with blue; 

The fervent underlid, and that above 

Lifted with laughter or abashed with love; 

Thine amorous girdle, full of thee and fair, 

And leavings of the lilies in thine hair. 

Yea, all sweet words of thine and all thy ways, 

And all the fruit of nights and flower of days. 

And stinging lips wherein the hot sweet brine 

That love was born of burns and foams like wine, 

And eyes insatiable of amorous hours. 

Fervent as fire and delicate as flowers. 

Colored like night at heart, but cloven through 

Like night with flame, dyed round like night with blue, 

Clothed with deep eyelids under and above — 

Yea, all thy beauty sickens me with love; 

Thy girdle empty of thee and now not fair, 

And ruinous lilies in thy languid hair. 

Ah, take no thought for Love's sake; shall this be, 

And she who loves thy lover not love thee? 

Sweet soul, sweet mouth of all that laughs and lives, 

Mine is she, very mine; and she forgives. 

For I beheld in sleep the light that is 

In her high place in Paphos, heard the kiss 

Of body and soul that mix with eager tears 

And laughter stinging through the eyes and ears; 



47 



48 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Saw Love, as burning flame from crown to feet, 

Imperishable, upon her storied seat; 

Clear eyelids lifted toward the north and south, 

A mind of many colors and a mouth 

Of many tunes and kisses; and she bowed, 

With all her subtle face laughing aloud, 

Bowed down upon me, saying, "Who doth the wrong, 

Sappho?" but thou — thy body is the song, 

Thy mouth the music; thou art more than I, 

Though my voice die not till the whole world die; 

Though men that hear it madden; though love weep. 

Though nature change, though shame be charmed to sleep. 

Ah, wilt thou slay me lest I kiss thee dead? 

Yet the queen laughed from her sweet heart and said: 

"Even she that flies shall follow for thy sake, 

And she shall give thee gifts that would not take, 

Shall kiss that would not kiss thee" (yea, kiss me) 

"When thou wouldst not" — when I would not kiss thee! 

Ah, more to me than all men as thou art. 

Shall not my songs assuage her at the heart? 

Ah, sweet to me as life seems sweet to death, 

Why should her wrath fill thee with fearful breath? 

Nay, sweet, for is she God alone? hath she 

Made earth and all the centuries of the sea. 

Taught the sun ways to travel, woven most fine 

The moonbeams, shed the starbeams forth as wine, 

Bound with her myrtles, beaten with her rods, 

The young men and the maidens and the gods? 

Have we not lips to love with, eyes for tears, 

And summer and flower of women and of years? 

Stars for the foot of morning, and for noon 

Simlight, and exaltation of the moon; 

Waters that answer waters, fields that wear 

Lilies, and languor of the Lesbian air? 

Beyond those fljang feet of fluttered doves, 

Are there not other gods for other loves? 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Yea, though she scourge thee, sweetest, for my sake, 

Blossom not thorns, and flowers not blood should break, 

Ah that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed 

To the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast! 

Ah that my mouth for Muses' milk were fed 

On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled! 

That with my tongue I felt them, and could taste 

The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist! 

That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat 

Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet 

Thy body were abolished and consumed, 

And in my flesh thy very flesh entombed! 

Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites. 

Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites. 

Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweetj 

The paces and the pauses of thy feet! 

Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air 

The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair! 

Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong, 

Sweeter thy lips than mine with all their song; 

Thy shoulders whiter than a fleece of white. 

And flower-sweet fingers good to bruise or bite 

As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells. 

With almond-shaped and rose-leaf colored shells. 

And blood Irke purple blossom at the tips 

Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips 

For my sake when I hurt thee; O that I 

Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die, 

Die of thy pain and my delight, and be 

Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee'd 

Would I not plague thee dying overmuch? 

Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch 

Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright 

Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light 

Strike pang after pang as note is struck from note, 

Catch the sob's middle music in thy throat. 



49 



50 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these 
A lyre of many faultless agonies? 
Feed thee with fever and famine and fine drouth, 
With perfect pangs convulse thy perfect mouth, 
Make thy life shudder in thee and burn afresh. 
And wring thy very spirit through the flesh? 
Cruel? but love makes all that love him well 
As wise as heaven and crueller than hell. 
Me hath love made more bitter toward thee 
Than death toward man ; but were I made as he 
Who hath made all things to break them one by one. 
If my feet trod upon the stars and sun 
And souls of men as his have always trod, 
God knows I might be crueller than God. 
For who shall change with prayers or thanksgivings 
The mystery of the cruelty of things? 
Or say what God above all gods and years. 
With offering and blood-sacrifice of tears. 
With lamentation from strange lands, from graves 
Where the snake pastures, from scarred mouths of slavei 
From prison, and from plunging prows of ships 
Through flame-like foam of the sea's closing lips — 
With thwartings of strange signs, and wind-blown hair 
Of comets, desolating the dim air. 
When darkness is made fast with seals and bars. 
And fierce reluctance of disastrous stars, 
^ Eclipse, and sound of shaken hills, and wings 
Darkening, and blind inexpiable things — 
With sorrow of laboring moons, and altering light 
And travail of the planets of the night, 
And weeping of the weary Pleiads seven. 
Feeds the mute melancholy lust of heaven? 
Is not this incense bitterness, his meat 
Murder? his hidden face and iron feet 
Hath not man known, and felt them on their way 
Threaten and trample all things and every day? 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 51 

Hath he not sent us hunger? who hath cursed 

Spirit and flesh with longing? filled with thirst 

Their lips who cried unto him? who bade exceed 

The fervid will, fall short the feeble deed, 

Bade sink the spirit and the flesh aspire. 

Pain animate the dust of dead desire, 

And life yield up her flower to violent fate? 

Him would I reach, him smite, him desecrate. 

Pierce the cold lips of God with human breath, 

And mix his immortality with death. 

Why hath he made us? what had all we done 

That we should live and loathe the sterile sun, 

And with the moon wax paler as she wanes. 

And pulse by pulse feel time grow through our veins? 

Thee too the years shall cover; thou shalt be 

As the rose born of one same blood with thee, 

As a song sung, as a word said, and fall 

Flower-wise, and be not any more at all, 

Nor any memory of thee anywhere; 

For never Muse has bound above thine hair 

The high Pierian flower whose graft outgrows 

All summer kinship of the mortal rose 

And color of deciduous days, nor shed 

Reflex and flush of heaven about thine head, 

Nor reddened brows made pale by floral grief 

With splendid shadow from that lordlier leaf. 

Yea, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine, 

Except these kisses of my lips on thine 

Brand them with immortality; but me — 

Men shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea, 

Nor mix their hearts with music, nor behold 

Cast forth of heaven with feet of awful gold 

And plumeless wings that make the bright air blind, 

Lightning with thunder for a hound behind 

Hunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown — 

But in the light and laughter, in the moan 



52 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

And music, and in grasp of lip and hand 
And shudder of water that makes felt on land 
The immeasurable tremor of all the sea, 
Memories shall mix and metaphors of me. 
Like me shall be the shuddering calm of night, 
When all the winds of the world for pure delight 
Close lips that quiver and fold up wings that ache; 
When nightingales are louder for love's sake. 
And leaves tremble like lute-strings or like fire; 
Like me the one star swooning with desire 
Even at the cold lips of the sleepless moon. 
As I at thine; like me the waste white noon, 
Burnt through with barren sunlight; and like me 
The land-stream and the tide-stream in the sea. 
I am sick with time as these with ebb and flow. 
And by the yearning in my veins I know 
The yearning sound of waters; and mine eyes 
Burn as that beamless fire which fills the skies 
With troubled stars and travailing things of flame; 
And in my heart the grief consuming them 
Labors, and in my veins the thirst of these, 
And all the summer travail of the trees 
And all the winter sickness; and the earth 
Filled full with deadly works of death and birth, 
Sore spent with hungry lusts of birth and death, 
Has pain like mine in her divided breath ; 
Her spring of leaves is barren, and her fruit 
Ashes; her boughs are burdened, and her root 
Fibrous and gnarled with poison; underneath 
Serpents have gnawn it through with tortuous teeth 
Made sharp upon the bones of all the dead. 
And wild birds rend her branches overhead. 
These, woven as raiment for his word and thought. 
These hath God made, and me as these, and wrought 
Song, and hath lit it at my lips; and me 
Earth shall not gather though she feed on thee. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 53 

As a shed tear shalt thou be shed; but I — 

Lo, earth may labor, men Hve long and die, 

Years change and stars, and the high God devise 

New things, and old things wane before his eyes 

Who wields and wrecks them, being more strong than 

they — 
But, having made me, me he shall not slay. 
Nor slay nor satiate, like those herds of his 
Who laugh and live a little, and their kiss 
Contents them, and their loves are swift and sweet. 
And sure death grasps and gains them with slow feet, 
Love they or hate they, strive or bow their knees — 
And all these end; he hath his will of these. 
Yea, but albeit he slay me, hating me — 
Albeit he hide me in the deep dear sea 
And cover me with cool wan foam, and ease 
This soul of mine as any soul of these. 
And give me water and great sweet waves, and make 
The very sea's name lordlier for my sake. 
The whole sea sweeter — albeit I die indeed 
And hide myself and sleep and no man heed, 
Of me the high God hath not all his will. 
Blossom of branches, and on each high hill 
Clear air, and wind, and under in clamorous vales 
Fierce noises of the fiery nightingales. 
Buds burning in the sudden spring like fire. 
The wan washed sand and the waves' vain desire. 
Sails seen like blown white flowers at sea, and words 
That bring tears swiftest, and long notes of birds 
Violently singing till the whole world sings — 
I Sappho shall be one with all these things, 
With all high things for ever; and my face 
Seen once, my songs once heard in a strange place, 
Cleave to men's lives, and waste the days thereof 
With gladness and much sadness and long love. ■ 

Yea, they shall say, earth's womb has borne in vain 



54 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

New things, and never this best thing again; 

Borne days and men, borne fruits and wars and wine. 

Seasons and songs, but no song more like mine. 

And they shall know me as ye who have known me here, 

Last year when I loved Atthis, and this year 

When I love thee ; and they shall praise me, and say 

^'She hath all time as all we have our day, 

Shall she not live and have her will" — even I? 

Yea, though thou diest, I say I shall not die. 

For these shall give me of their souls, shall give 

Life, and the days and loves wherewith I live, 

Shall quicken me with loving, fill with breath. 

Save me and serve me, strive for me with death. 

Alas, that neither moon nor snow nor dew 

Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through, 

Assauge me nor allay me nor appease, 

Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease; 

Till time wax faint in all his periods; 

Till fate undo the bondage of the gods. 

And lay, to slake and satiate me all through, 

Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew. 

And shed around and over and under me 

Thick darkness and the insuperable sea. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 55 



HYMN TO PROSERPINE 

(after the proclamation in ROME OF THE CHRISTIAN 

faith) 
Vicisti, Galilcee 

I HAVE lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love 

hath an end; 
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and be^ 

friend. 
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons 

that laugh or that weep; 
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep. 
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the 

dove; 
But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love. 
Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold, 
A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold? 
I am sick of singing; the bays burn deep and chafe: I am 

fain 
To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain. 
For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath, 
We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death. 
O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a 

day! 
From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your 

chains, men say. 
New Gods are crowned in the city, their flowers have broken 

your rods; 
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassion- 
ate Gods. 
But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare; 
Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were. 



56 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Time and the Gods are at strife: ye dwell in the midst 

thereof, 
Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love. 
I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at 

peace. 
Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall 

cease. 
Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not 

take. 
The laurels, the palms and the paean, the breast of the 

nymphs in the brake; 
Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer 

breath; 
And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before 

death ; 
All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre. 
Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker 

like fire. 
More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these 

things? 
Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings. 
A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may? 
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day. 
And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his 

tears: 
Why should he labor, and bring fresh grief to blacken his 

years? 
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown 

grey from thy breath; 
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness 

of death. 
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day; 
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not 

May. 
Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet 

in the end; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 57 

For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and 

rend. 
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that 

abides; 
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the 

foam of the tides. 
O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks 

and rods! 

ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods! 
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all 

knees bend, 

1 kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end. 
All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are 

cast 
Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the 

surf of the past: 
^Hiere beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote 

sea-gates, 
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death 

waits: 
Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the 

seas as with wings, 
\nd impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable 

things, 
White-eyed and poisonous finned, shark-toothed and serpen- 
tine-curled, 
R.olls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of 

the world. 
The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms 

flee away; 
]n the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as 

a prey; 
in its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all 

men's tears; 
Nith light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of 

vears: 



58 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour 

upon hour; 
And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as 

fangs that devour: 
And its vapor and storm of its steam as the sighing of 

spirits to be; 
And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the 

roots of the sea: 
And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost 

stars of the air: 
And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, 

and time is made bare. 
Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the 

high sea with rods? 
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than 

all ye Gods? 
All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be 

past; 
Ye are Gods, and behold ye shall die, and the waves be 

upon you at last. 
In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the 

changes of things. 
Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall 

forget you for kings. 
Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords 

and our forefathers trod, 
Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead 

art a God, 
Though before thee the throned Cytherian be fallen, and 

hidden her head, 
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go 

down to thee dead. 
Of the maiden thy mother, men sing as a goddess with grace 

clad around; 
Thou art throned where another was king; where another 

was queen she is crowned. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 59 

Yea, bnce we had sight of another: but now she is queen, 

say these. 
Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of 

flowering seas, 
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and 

fair as the foam. 
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of 

Rome. 
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but 

ours. 
Her deep hair heavily laden with odor and color of 

flowers, 
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendor, a flame. 
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet 

with her name. 
For time came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; 

but she 
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her 

foot on the sea, 
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the 

viewless ways. 
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of 

the bays. 
Ye are fallen, our lords by what token? we wist that ye should 

not fall. 
Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than 

ye all. 
But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in 

the end ; 
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and be- 
friend. 

daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom 

of birth, 

1 am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth. 

In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, 
the night where thou art, 



6o- SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep over- 
flows from -he heart, 
Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and 

the red rose is white. 
And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the 

flowers of the night. 
And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods 

from afar 
Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a 

star. 
In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod 

by the sun. 
Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is 

done and undone. 
Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our 

temporal breath; 
For these give labor and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, 

death. 
Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. 

I know 
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even 

so. 
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a 

span; 
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.*^ 



So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither 

weep. 
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is 

a sleep. 

^limxaQiov el 6aaTd^ov vexqov. 

Epictetus. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 6l 

ILICET 

There is an end of joy and sorrow; 
Peace all day long, all night, all morrow, 

But never a time to laugh or weep. 
The end is come of pleasant places, 
The end of tender words and faces. 

The end of all, the poppied sleep. 

No place for sound within their hearing. 
No room to hope, no time for fearing. 

No lips to laugh, no lids for tears. 
The old years have run out all their measure; 
No chance of pain, no chance of pleasure, 

No fragment of the broken years. 

Outside of all the worlds and ages. 
There where the fool is as the sage is. 

There where the slayer is clean of blood, 
No end, no passage, no beginning. 
There where the sinner leaves off sinning. 

There where the good man is not good. 

There is not one thing with another. 
But Evil saith to Good: My brother. 

My brother, I am one with thee: 
They shall not strive nor cry forever: 
No man shall chose between them: never 

Shall this thing end and that thing be. 

Wind wherein seas and stars are shaken 

Shall shake them, and they shall not waken; 

None that has lain down shall arise; 
The stones are sealed across their places; 
One shadow is shed on all their faces. 
One blindness cast on all their eyes. 



62 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Sleep, is it sleep perchance that covers 
Each face, as each face were his lover's? 

Farewell: as men that sleep fare well. 
The grave's mouth laughs unto derision 
Desire and dread and dream and vision, 

Delight of heaven and sorrow of hell. 



No soul shall tell nor lip shall number 
The names and tribes of you that slumber; 

No memory, no memorial. 
"Thou knowest" — who shall say thou knowest? 

There is none highest and none lowest; 

An end, an end, an end of all. 

Good night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow, 
To these that shall not have good morrow; 

The gods be gentle to all these. 
Nay, if death be not, how shall they be? 
Nay, is there help in heaven? it may be 

All things and lords of things shall cease. 

The stooped urn, filling, dips and flashes; 
The bronzed brims are deep in ashes; 

The pale old lips of death are fed. 
Shall this dust gather flesh hereafter? 
Shall one shed tears or fall to laughter, 

At sight of all these poor old dead? 

Nay, as thou wilt; these know not of it; 
Thine eyes' strong weeping shall not profit. 

Thy laughter shall not give thee ease; 
Cry aloud, spare not, cease not crying, 
Sigh, till thou cleave thy sides with sighing, 

Thou shalt not raise up one of these. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 63 

Burnt spices flash, and burnt wine hisses, 
The breathing flame's mouth curls and kisses 

The small dried rows of frankincense; 
All round the sad red blossoms smoulder. 
Flowers colored like the fire, but colder, 

In sign of sweet things taken hence; 



Yea, for their sake and in death's favor 
Things of sweet shape and of sweet savor 

We yield them, spice and flower and wine; 
Yea, costlier things than wine or spices. 
Whereof none knoweth how great the price is, 

And fruit that comes not of the vine. 

From boy's pierced throat and girl's pierced bosom 
Drips, reddening round the blood-red blossoms, 

The slow delicious bright soft blood, 
Bathing the spices and the pyre. 
Bathing the flowers and fallen fire, 

Bathing the blossom by the bud. 

Roses whose lips the flame had deadened 
Drink till the lapping leaves are reddened 

And warm wet inner petals weep; 
The flower whereof sick sleep gets leisure, 
Barren of balm and purple pleasure. 

Fumes with no native steam of sleep. 

Why will ye weep? what do ye weeping? 
For waking folk and people sleeping, 

And sands that fill and sands that fall, 
The days rose-red, the poppied hours, 
Blood, wine, and spice and fire and flowers. 

There is one end of one and all. 



64 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Shall such an one lend love or borrow? 
Shall these be sorry for thy sorrow? 

Shall these give thanks for words or breath? 
Their hate is as their loving-kindness; 
The frontlet of their brows is blindness, 

The armlet of their arms is death. 



Lo, for no noise or light of thunder 
Shall these grave-clothes be rent in sunder, 

He that hath taken, shall he give? 
He hath rent them: shall he bind together? 
He hath bound them: shall he break the tether? 
He hath slain them: shall he bid them live? 

A little sorrow, a little pleasure. 
Fate metes us from the dusty measure 

That holds the date of all of us; 
We are born with travail and strong crying, 
And from the birth-day to the dying 
The likeness of our life is thus. 

One girds himself to serve another. 

Whose father was the dust, whose mother 

The little dead red worm therein; 
They find no fruit of things they cherish; 
The goodness of a man shall perish. 

It shall be one thing with his sin. 

In deep wet ways by grey old gardens 

Fed with sharp spring the sweet fruit hardens; 

They know not what fruits wane or grow; 
Red summer burns to the utmost ember; 
They know not, neither can remember. 

The old years and flowers they used to know. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 65 

Ah, for their sakes, so trapped and taken, 
For theirs, forgotten and forsaken. 

Watch, sleep not, gird thyself with prayer. 
Nay, where the heart of wrath is broken, 
Where long love ends as a thing spoken, 
How shall thy crying enter there? 



Though the iron sides of the old world falter 
The likeness of them shall not alter 

For all the rumor of periods. 
The stars and seasons that come after 
The tears of latter men, the laughter 

Of the unalterable gods. 



Far up above the years and nations. 

The high gods, clothed and crowned with patience. 

Endure through days of death-like date; 
They bear the witness of things hidden; 
Before their eyes all life stands chidden. 

As they before the eyes of Fate. 



Not for their love shall Fate retire. 
Nor they relent for our desire. 

Nor the graves open for their call. 
The end is more than joy and anguish. 
Than lives that laugh and lives that languish. 

The poppied sleep, the end of all. 



66 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

HERMAPHRODITUS 



Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love, 

Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest; 

Of all things tired thy lips look weariest, 
Save the long smile that they are wearied of. 
Ah sweet, albeit no love be sweet enough, 

Choose of two loves and cleave unto the best; 

Two loves at either blossom of thy breast 
Strive until one be under and one above. 
Their breath is fire upon the amorous air. 
Fire in thine eyes and where thy lips suspire: 
And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair, 

Two things turn all his life and blood to fire; 
A strong desire begot on great despair, 

A great despair cast out by strong desire. 



II 



Where between sleep and life some brief space is, 
With love like gold bound round about the head, 
Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed. 

Turning the fruitful feud of hers and his 

To the waste wedlock of a sterile kiss; 

Yet from them something like as fire is shed 
That shall not be assauged till death be dead, 

Though neither life nor sleep can find out this. 

Love made himself of flesh that perisheth 
A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin; 

But on the one side sat a man like death, 
And on the other a woman sat like sin. 

So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath 
Love turned himself and would not enter in. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 6) 



III 



Love, is it love or sleep or shadow or light 

That lies between thine eyelids and thine eyes? 

Like a flower laid upon a flower it lies, 
Or like the night's dew laid upon the night. 
Love stands upon thy left hand and thy right, 

Yet by no sunset and by no moonrise 

Shall make thee man and ease a woman's sighs, 
Or make thee woman for a man's delight. 
To what strange end hath some strange god made fair 

The double blossom of two fruitless flowers? 
Hid love in all the folds of all thy hair, 

Fed thee on summers, watered thee with showers, 
Given all the gold that all the seasons wear 

To thee that art a thing of barren hours? 



IV 



Yea, love, I see; it is not love but fear. 

Nay, sweet, it is not fear but love, I know; 

Or wherefore should thy body's blossom blow 
So sweetly, or thine eyelids leave so clear 
Thy gracious eyes that never made a tear — 

Though for their love our tears like blood should flow, 

Though love and life and death should come and go, 
So dreadful, so desirable, so dear? 
Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise 

Beneath the woman's and the water's kiss 

Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis, 
And the large light turned tender in thine eyes, ^ 
And all thy boy's breath softened into sighs; 

But Love being blind, how should he know of this? 



Au Musee du Louvre, Mars i86j. 



68 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



FRAGOLETTA 

Love! what shall be said of thee? 
The son of grief begot by joy? 
Being sightless, wilt thou see? 
Being sexless, wilt thou be 
Maiden or boy? 

1 dreamed of strange lips yesterday 
And cheeks wherein the ambiguous blood 
Was like a rose's — yea 

A rose's when it lay 
Within the bud. 



What fields have bred thee, or what groves 
Concealed thee, O mysterious flower, 
O double rose of Love's, 
With leaves that lure the doves 
From bud to bower? 



I dare not kiss it, lest my lip 
Press harder than an indrawn breath.^ 
And all the sweet life slip 
Forth, and the sweet leaves drip, 
Bloodlike, in death. 



O sole desire of my delight ! 
O sole delight of my desire! 
Mine eyelids and eyesight 
Feed on thee day and night 
Like lips of fire. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 69 

Lean back thy throat of carven pearl, 
Let thy mouth murmur like the dove's; 
Say, Venus hath no girl, 
No front of female curl. 
Among her Loves. 

Thy sweet low bosom, thy close hair, 
Thy strait soft flanks and slenderer feet, 
Thy virginal strange air, 
Are these not over fair 
For Love to greet? 

How should he greet thee? what new name. 
Fit to move all men's hearts, could move 
Thee, deaf to love or shame. 
Love's sister, by the same 
Mother as Love? 

Ah, sweet, the maiden's mouth is cold. 
Her breast-blossoms are simply red. 
Her hair mere brown or gold. 
Fold over simple fold 
Binding her head. 

Thy mouth is made of fire and wine. 
Thy barren bosom takes my kiss 
And turns my soul to thine 
And turns thy lip to mine, 
And mine it is. 



Thou hast a serpent in thine hair, 
Tn all the curls that close and cling; 
And ah, thy breast-flower! 
Ah love, thy mouth too fair 
To kiss and sting. 



70 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Cleave to me, love me, kiss mine eyes 
Satiate thy lips with loving me; 
Nay, for thou shalt not rise; 
Lie still as Love that dies 
For love of thee. 

Mine arms are close about thine head, 
My lips are fervent on thy face, 
And where my kiss hath fed 
Thy flower-like blood leaps red 
To the kissed place. 

O bitterness of things too sweet 
O broken singing of the dove! 
Love's wings are over fleet. 
And like the panther's feet 
The feet of Love. 



RONDEL 



These many years since we began to be, 
What have the gods done with us? what with me, 
What with my love? they have shown me fates and fears, 
Harsh springs, and fountains bitterer than the sea, 
Grief a fixed star, and a joy a vane that veers, 
These many years. 

With her, my love, with her have they done well? 
But who shall answer for her? who shall tell 
Sweet things or sad, such things as no man hears? 
May no tears fall, if no tears ever fell, 
From eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres 
These many years! 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 71 

But if tears ever touched, for any grief, 
Those eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf, 
Deep double shells where through the eye-flower peers, 
Let them weep once more only, sweet and brief. 
Brief tears and bright, for one who gave her tears 
These many years. 



SATIA TE SANGUINE 

If you loved me ever so little, 
, I could bear the bonds that gall. 
Could dream the bonds were brittle; 
You do not love me at all. 

O beautiful lips, O bosom 

More white than the moon's and 
A sterile, a ruinous blossom 

Is blown your way in a storm. 

As the lost white feverish limbs 
Of the Lesbian Sappho, adrift 

In foam where the sea-weed swims, 
Swam loose for the streams to lift. 

My heart swims iDlind in a sea 
That stuns me; swims to and fro. 

And gathers to windward and lee 

Lamentation, and mourning, and woe. 

A broken, an emptied boat. 
Sea saps it, winds blow apart. 

Sick and adrift and afloat. 
The barren waif of a heart. 



72 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Where, when the gods would be cruel, 
Do they go for a torture? where 

Plant thorns, set pain like a jewel? 
Ah, not in the flesh, not there: 

The racks of earth and the rods 
Are weak as foam on the sands; 

In the heart is the prey for gods, 
Who crucify hearts, not hands. 

Mere pangs corrode and consume. 
Dead when life dies in the brain; 

In the infinite spirit is room 

For the pulse of an infinite pain. 

I wish you were dead, my dear; 

I would give you, had I to give, 
Some death too bitter to fear; 

It is better to die than live. 

I wish you were stricken of thunder 
And burnt with a bright flame through, 

Consumed and cloven in sunder, 
I dead at your feet like you. 

If I could but know after all, 
I might cease to hunger and ache. 

Though your heart were ever so small 
If it were not a stone or a snake. 

You are crueller, you that we love. 
Than hatred, hunger, or death; 

You have eyes and breasts like a dove 
And you kill men's hearts with a breath. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

As plague in a poisonous city- 
Insults and exults on her dead, 

To you, when pallid for pity 

Comes love, and fawns to be fed. 

As a tame beast writhes and wheedles, 

He fawns to be fed with wiles; 
You carve him a cross of needles. 

And whet them sharp as your smiles. 

He is patient of thorn and whip, 

He is dumb under axe or dart; 
You suck with a sleepy red lip 

The wet red wounds in his heart. 

You thrill as his pulses dwindle, 

You brighten and warm as he bleeds. 

With insatiable eyes that kindle 
And insatiable mouth that feeds. 

Your hands nailed love to the tree, 

You stript him, scourged him with rodSj 

And drowned him deep in the sea 
That hides the dead and their gods. 

And for all this, die will he not; 

There is no man sees him but I; 
You came and went and forgot; 

I hope he will some day die. 



73 



74 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 
A LAMENTATION 



Who hath known the ways of time 
Or trodden behind his feet? 

There is no such man among men. 
For chance overcomes him, or crime 
Changes; for all things sweet 
In time wax bitter again. 
Who shall give sorrow enough, 

Or who the abundance of tears? 
Mine eyes are heavy with love 

And a sword gone through mine ears, 
A sound like a sword and fire, 
For pity, for great desire; 
Who shall ensure me thereof, 

Lest I die, being full of my fears? 

Who hath known the ways and the wrath 
The sleepless spirit, the root 
And blossom of evil will. 

The divine device of a god? 
Who shall behold it or hath? 

The twice-tongued prophets are mute, 
The many speakers are still; 
No foot has travelled or trod, 
No hand has meted, his path. 
Man's fate is a blood-red fruit. 
And the mighty gods have their fill 
And relax not the rein, or the rod. 

Ye were mighty in heart from of old. 

Ye slew with the spear, and are slain. 
Keen after heat is the cold. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 75 

Sore after summer is rain, 
And melteth man to the bone. 

As water he weareth away, 

As a flower, as an hour in a day 
Fallen from laughter to moan. 
But my spirit is shaken with fear 

Lest an evil thing begin. 

New-born, a spear for a spear, 

And one for another sin. 
Or ever our tears began, 

It was known from of old and said: 
One law for a living man. 

And another law for the dead. 
For these are fearful and sad. 

Vain, and things without breath; 
While he lives let a man be glad. 
For none hath joy of his death. 



II 



Who hath known the pain, the old pain of earth, 

Or all the travail of the sea, 
The many ways and waves, the birth 
Fruitless, the labor nothing worth? 

Who hath known, who knowest, O gods? not we. 

There is none shall say he hath seen, 

There is none he hath known. 
Though he saith, Lo, a lord have I been, 

I have reaped and sown; 
I have seen the desire of mine eyes, 

The beginning of love. 
The season of kisses and sighs 

And the end thereof 
I have known the ways of the sea, 



76 SWINBURhE'S POEMS 

All the perilous ways; 
Strange winds have spoken with me, 

And the tongues of strange days. 
I have hewn the pine for ships; 

Where steeds run arow, 
I have seen from their bridled lips 

Foam blown as the snow, 
With snapping of chariot-poles 

And with straining of oars 
I have grazed in the race the goals, 

In the storm the shores; 
As a greave is cleft with an arrow 

At the joint of the knee, ' 

I have cleft through the sea-straits narrow 

To the heart of the sea. 
When air was smitten in sunder 

I have watched on high 
The ways of the stars and the thunder 

In the night of the sky; 
Where the dark brings forth light as a flower, 

As from lips that dissever; 
One abideth the space of an hour, 

One endureth for ever. 
Lo, what hath he seen or known 

Of the way and the wave 
Unbeholden, unsailed-on, unsown, 

From the breast to the grave? 

Or ever the stars were made, or skies. 
Grief was born, and the kinless night. 
Mother of gods without form or name. 
And light is born out of heaven and dies. 
And one day knows not another's light, 
But night is one, and her shape the same. 
But dumb the goddesses underground 

Wait, and we hear not on earth if their feet 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 77 

Rise, and the night wax loud with their wings; 
Dumb, without word or shadow of sound ; 
And sift in scales and winnow as wheat 
Men's souls, and sorrow of manifold things. 



Ill 



Nor less of grief than ours 
The gods wrought long ago 
To bruise men one by one; 
But with the incessant hours 
Fresh grief and greener woe 
Spring, as the sucMen sun 
Year after year makes flowers; 
And these die down and grow, 
And the next year lacks none. 

As these men sleep, have slept 
The old heroes in time fled, 
No dream-divided sleep; 
And holier eyes have wept 
Than ours when on her dead 
Gods have seen Thetis weep. 
With heavenly hair far-swept 

Back, heavenly hands outspread 
Round what she could not keep. 

Could not one day withhold, 
One night; and like as these 
White ashes of no weight, 
Held not his urn the cold 
Ashes of Heracles! 

For all things born one gate 
Opens, no gate of gold; 
Opens; and no man sees 
Beyond the gods and fate. 



78 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

BEFORE PARTING 

A MONTH or twain to live on honeycomb 
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time, 
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme, 
And that strong purple under juice and foam 
Where the wine's heart has burst; 
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first. 

Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray 

Even to change the bitterness of it, 

The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet. 

To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay 

All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise 

Over my face and eyes. 

And yet who knows what end the scythed wheat 
Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red? 
These were not sown, these are not harvested, 
They grow a month and are cast under feet 
And none has care thereof. 
As none has care of a divided love. 

I know each shadow of your lips by rote, 
Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows; 
The fashion of fair temples tremulous 
With tender blood, and color of your throat; 
I know not how love is gone out of this, 
Seeing that all was his. 

Love's likeness there endures upon all these: 

But out of these one shall not gather love. 

Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough 

To make love whole and fill his lips with ease, 

As some bee-builded cell 

Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 79 

I know not how this last month leaves your hair 

Less full of purple color and hid spice, 

And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes 

Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care; 

And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet 

Worth patience to regret. 



IN THE ORCHARD 

(PROVENQAL BURDEN) 

Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see; 
Let the dew-fall drench either side of me; 

Clear apple-leaves are soft upon that moon 
Seen sidelong like a blossom in the tree; 

Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 

The grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie. 
Kissed upon either cheek and either eye, 

I turn to thee as some green afternoon 
Turns toward sunset, and is loth to die; 

Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 

Lie closer, lean your face upon my side, 
Feel where the dew fell that has hardly dried, 

Hear how the blood beats that went nigh to swoon; 
The pleasure lives there when the sense has died; 

Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 

O my fair lord, I charge you leave me this: 
Is it not sweeter than a foolish kiss? 

Nay take it then, my flower, my first in June, 
My rose, so like a tender mouth it is: 

Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 



So SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire, 
Dividing my delight and my desire, 

The crescent life and love the plenilune. 
Love me though dusk begin and dark retire; 

Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 

Ah, my heart fails my blood draws back; I know, 
When life runs over, life is near to go ; 

And with the slain of love, love's ways are strewn, 
And with their blood, if love will have it so ; 

Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 

Ah, do thy will now ; slay me if thou wilt ; 
There is no building now the walls are built, 

No quarrying now the comer-stone is hewn. 
No drinking now the vine's whole blood is spilt; 

Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 

Nay, slay me now; nay, for I will be slain; 
Pluck thy red pleasure from the teeth of pain. 

Break down thy vine ere yet grape-gatherers prune. 
Slay me ere day can slay desire again; 

Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 

, Yea, with thy sweet lips, with thy sweet sword; yea, 
Take life and all, for I will die, I say; 

Love, I gave love, is life a better boon? 
For sweet night's sake I will not live till day; 
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 

Nay, I will sleep then only; nay, but go. 
Ah sweet, too sweet to me, my sweet, I know 

Love, sleep, and death go to the sweet same tune; 
Hold my hair fast, and kiss me through it so. 

Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 8i 



A MATCH 



If love were what the rose is, 

And I were Hke the leaf, 
Our lives would grow together 
In sad or singing weather, 
Blown fields or flowerful closes, 

Green pleasure or grey grief; 
If love were what the rose is. 

And I were like the leaf. 

If I were what the words are. 
And love were like the tune, 
With double sound and single 
Delight our lips would mingle. 
With kisses glad as birds are 
That get sweet rain at noon; 
If I were what the words are 
And love were like the tune. 

If you were life, my darling. 
And I your love were death, 

We'd shine and snow together 

Ere March made sweet the weather 

With daffodil and starling 
And hours of fruitful breath; 

If you were life, my darling. 
And I your love were death. 

If you were thrall to sorrow. 

And I were page to joy. 
We'd play for lives and seasons 
With loving looks and treasons 
And tears of night and morrow 



82 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

And laughs of maid and boy; 
If you were thrall to sorrow, 
And I were page to joy. 

If you were April's lady, 
And I were lord in May, 
We'd throw with leaves for hours 
And draw for days with flowers. 
Till day like night were shady 

And night were bright like day; 
If you were April's lady, 

And I were lord in May. 

If you were queen of pleasure, 

And I were king of pain, 
We'd hunt down love together. 
Pluck out his flying-feather, 
And teach his feet a measure. 
And find his mouth a rein; 
If you were queen of pleasure, 
And I were king of pain. 



FAUSTINE 

Ave Faustina Imperatrix; morituri-te salutant 

Lean back, and get some minutes' peace; 

Let your head lean 
Back to the shoulder with its fleece 

Of locks, Faustine. 

The shapely silver shoulder stoops. 

Weighed over clean 
With state of splendid hair that droops 

Each side, Faustine. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 83 

Let me go over your good gifts 

That crown you queen; 
A queen whose kingdom ebbs and shifts 

Each week, Faustine. 



Bright heavy brow well gathered up; 

White gloss and sheen; 
Carved lips that make my lips a cup 

To drink, Faustine. 

Wine and rank poison, milk and blood, 

Being mixed therein 
Since first the devil threw dice with God 

For you, Faustine. 

Your naked new-born soul, their stake, 

Stood blind between; 
God said "let him that wins her take 

And keep Faustine." 

But this time Satan throve, no doubt; 

Long since, I ween, 
God's part in you was battered out; 

Long since, Faustine. 

The die rang sideways as it fell, 

Rang cracked and thin. 
Like a man's laughter heard in hell 

Far down, Faustine. 

A shadow of laughter like a sigh, 

Dead sorrow's kin; 
So rang, thrown down, the devil's die 

That won Faustine. 



84 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

A suckling of his breed you were, 

One hard to wean; 
But God, who lost you, left you fair, 

We see, Faustine. 



You have the face that suits a woman 

For her soul's screen — 
The sort of beauty that's called human 

In hell, Faustine. 

You could do all things but be good 

Or chaste of mien; 
And that you would not if you could, 

We know, Faustine. 

Even he who cast seven devils out 

Of Magdalene 
Could hardly do as much, I doubt. 

For you, Faustine. 

Did Satan make you to spite God? 

Or did God mean 
To scourge with scorpions for a rod 

Our sins, Faustine? 

I know what queen at first you were. 

As though I had seen 
Red gold and black imperious hair 

Twice crown Faustine. 

As if your fed sarcophagus 

Spared flesh and skin, 
You come back face to face with us, 

The same Faustine. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 85 

She loved the games men played with death, 

Where death must win; 
As though the slain man's blood and breath 

Revived Faustine. 



Nets caught the pike, pikes tore the net; 

Lithe limbs and lean 
From drained-out pores dripped thick red sweat 

To soothe Faustine. 

She drank the steaming drift and dust 

Blown off the scene; 
Blood could not ease the bitter lust 

That galled Faustine. 

All round the foul fat furrows reeked, 

Where blood sank in; 
The circus splashed and seethed and shrieked 

All round Faustine. 

But these are gone now: years entomb 

The dust and din; 
Yea, even the bath's fierce reek and fume 

That slew Faustine. 

Was life worth living then? and now 

Is life worth sin? 
Where are the imperial years? and how 

Are you, Faustine? 

Your soul forgot her joys, forgot 

Her times of teen; 
Yea, this life likewise will you not 

Forget, Faustine? 



86 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

For in the time we know not of 

Did fate begin 
Weaving the web of days that wove 

Your doom, Faustine. 

The threads were wet with wine, and all 

Were smooth to spin; 
They wove you like a Bacchanal, 

The first Faustine. 



And Bacchus cast your mates and you 

Wild grapes to glean; 
Your flower-like lips dashed with dew 

From his, Faustine. 

Your drenched loose hands were stretched to hold 

The vine's wet green. 
Long ere they coined in Roman gold 

Your face, Faustine. 

Then after change of soaring feather 

And winnowing fin. 
You woke in weeks of feverish weather, 

A new Faustine. 



A star upon your birthday burned, 

Whose fierce serene 
Red pulseless planet never yearned 

In heaven, Faustine. 

Stray breaths of Sapphic song that blew 

Through Mitylene 
Shook the fierce quivering blood in you 

By night, Faustine. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 87 

The shameless nameless loves that makes 

Hell's iron gin 
Shut on you like a trap that breaks 

The soul, Faustine. 



And when your veins were void and dead, 

What ghosts unclean 
Swarmed round the straitened barren bed 

That hid Faustine? 

What sterile growths of sexless root 

Or epicene? 
What flower of kisses without fruit 

Of love, Faustine? 

What adders came to shed their coats? 

What coiled obscene 
Small serpents with soft stretching throats 

Caressed Faustine? 

But the time came of famished hours, 

Maimed loves and mean, 
This ghastly thin-faced time of ours. 

To spoil Faustine. 

You seem a thing that hinges hold, 

A love-machine 
With clockwork joints of supple gold — 

No more, Faustine. 

Not Godless, for you serve one God, 

The Lampsacene, 
Who metes the gardens with his rod; 

Your lord, Faustine. 



88 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

If one should love you with real love 

(Such things have been, 
Things your fair face knows nothing of 

It seems, Faustine) ; 

That clear hair heavily bound back, 

The lights wherein 
Shift from dead blue to burnt-up black 

Your throat, Faustine, 

Strong, heavy, throwing out the face 

And hard bright chin 
And shameful scornful lips that grace 

Their shame, Faustine, 

Curled lips, long since half kissed away, 

Still sweet and keen; 
You'd give him — poison shall we say? 

Or what, Faustine? 



ROCOCO 



Take hand and part with laughter; 

Touch lips and part with tears; 
Once more and no more after, 

Whatever comes with years. 
We twain shall not remeasure 

The ways that left us twain; 
Nor crush the lees of pleasure 

From sanguine grapes of pain. 

We twain once well in sunder. 
What will the mad gods do 
For hate with me, I wonder, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 89 

Or what for love with you? 
Forget them till November, 

And dream there's April yet, 
Forget that I remember. 

And dream that I forget. 

Time found our tired love sleeping, 

And kissed away his breath; 
But what should we do weeping. 

Though light love sleep to death? 
We have drained his lips at leisure, 

Till there's not left to drain 
A single sob of pleasure, 

A single pulse of pain. 

Dream that the lips once breathless 

Might quicken if they would ; 
Say that the soul is deathless; 

Dream that the gods are good; 
Say March may wed September, 

And time divorce regret; 
But not that you remember, 

And not that I forget. 

We have heard from hidden places 

What love scarce lives and hears: 
We have seen on fervent faces 

The pallor of strange tears: 
We have trod the wine- vats treasure, 

Whence ripe to steam and stain. 
Foams round the feet of pleasure 

The blood-red must of pain. 

Remembrance may recover 

And time bring back to time 
The name of your first lover. 



90 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

The ring of my first rhyme; 
But rose-leaves of December 

The frosts of June shall fret, 
The day that you remember, 

The day that I forgot. 

The snake that hides and hisses 

In heaven we twain have known; 
The grief of cruel kisses, 

The joy whose mouth makes moan; 
The pulses pause and measure, 

Where in one furtive vein 
Throbs through the heart of pleasure 

The purpler blood of pain. 

We have done with tears and treasons 

And love for treason's sake; 
Room for the swift new seasons, 

The years that burn and break. 
Dismantle and dismember 

Men's days and dreams, Juliette; 
For love may not remember. 

But time will not forget. 

Life treads down love in flying. 

Time withers him at root; 
Bring all dead things and dying, 

Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit. 
Where, crushed by three days' pressure 

Our three days' love lies slain; 
And earlier leaf of pleasure, 

And latter flower of pain. 

Breathe close upon the ashes. 

It may be flame will leap; 
Unclose the soft close lashes. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 91 

Lift up the lids and weep. 
Light love's extinguished ember, 

Let one tear leave it wet 
For one that you remember 

And ten that you forget. 



STAGE LOVE 



When the game began between them for a jest, 
He played king and she played queen to match the best; 
Laughter soft as tears, and tears that turned to laughter, 
These were things she sought for years and sorrowed after. 

Pleasure with dry lips, and pain that walks by night; 
All the sting and all the stain of long delight; 
These were things she knew not of, that knew not of her, 
When she played at half a love with half a lover. 

Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh or cry; 
They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die; 
Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow, 
Till he died for good in play, and rose in sorrow. 

What the years mean; how time dies and is not slain; 
How love grows and laughs and cries and wanes again; 
These were things she came to know, and take their measure. 
When the play was played out so for one man's pleasure. 



92 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



A BALLAD OF BURDENS 

The burden of fair women. Vain delight, 
And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way, 

And sorrowful old age that comes by night 
As a thief comes that has no heart by day, 
And change that finds fair cheeks and leaves them grey 

And weariness that keeps awake for hire, 
And grief that says what pleasure used to say; 

This is the end of every man's desire. 

The burden of bought kisses. This is sore, 

A burden without fruit in childbearing ; 
Between the nightfall and the dawn threescore, 

Threescore between the dawn and evening. 

The shuddering in thy lips, the shuddering 
In thy sad eyelids tremulous like fire, 

Makes love seem shameful and a wretched thing. 
This is the end of every man's desire. 

The burden of sweet speeches. Nay, kneel down, 

Cover thy head, and weep; for verily 
These market-men that buy thy white and brown 

In the last days shall take no thought for thee. 

In the last days like earth thy face shall be. 
Yea, like sea-marsh made thick with brine and mire, 

Sad with sick leavings of the sterile sea. 
This is the end of every man's desire. 

The burden of long living. Thou shalt fear 
Waking, and sleeping mourn upon thy bed; 

And say at night "Would God the day were here," 
And say at dawn "Would God the day were dead." 
With weary days thou shalt be clothed and fed. 

And wear remorse of heart for thine attire. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Pain for thy girdle and sorrow upon thine head; 
This is the end of every man's desire. 

The burden of bright colors. Thou shalt see 

Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green; 
And as the thing thou seest thy face shall be, 

And no more as the thing before time seen. 

And thou shalt say of mercy "It hath been," 
And living, watch the old lips and loves expire. 

And talking, tears shall take thy breath between. 
This is the end of every man's desire. 

The burden of sad sayings. In that day 

Thou shalt tell all thy days and hours, and tell 

Thy times and ways and words of love, and say 
How one was dear and one desirable. 
And sweet was life to hear and sweet to smell, 

But now with lights reverse the old hours retire 
And the last hour is shod with fire from hell. 

This is the end of every man's desire. 

The burden of four seasons. Rain in spring, 
White rain and wind among the tender trees; 

A summer of green sorrows gathering, 
Rank autumn in a mist of miseries. 
With sad face set towards the year, that sees 

The charred ash drop out of the dropping pyre, 
And winter wan with many maladies; 

This is the end of every man's desire. 

The burden of dead faces. Out of sight 
And out of love, beyond the reach of hands, 

Changed in the changing of the dark and light, 
They walk and weep about the barren lands 
Where no seed is nor any garner stands, 

Where in short breaths the doubtful days respire. 



94 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

And time's turned glass lets through the sighing sands; 
This is the end of every man's desire. 

The burden of much gladness. Life and lust 

Forsake thee, and the face of thy delight; 
A.nd underfoot the heavy hour strews dust; 

And overhead strange weathers burn and bite; 

And where the red was, lo the bloodless white, 
A.nd where truth was, the likeness of a liar. 

And where day was, the likeness of the night; 
This is the end of every man's desire. 

l'envoy 

Princes, and ye whom pleasure quickeneth. 

Heed this rhyme before your pleasure tire; 
■^or life is sweet, but after life is death. 

This is the end of every man's desire. 



BEFORE THE MIRROR 

(verses written under a picture) 
inscribed to j. a. m. whistler 

I 

White rose in red rose-garden 

Is not so white; 
Snowdrops that plead for pardon 

And pine for fright 
Because the hard East blows 
Over their maiden rows 

Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 95 

Behind the veil, forbidden 

Shut up from sight, 
Love, is there sorrow hidden, 

Is there delight? 
Is joy thy dower of grief. 
White rose of weary leaf. 

Late rose whose life is brief, whose loves are light? 

Soft snows that hard winds harden 

Till each flake bite 
Fill all the flowerless garden 

Whose flowers took flight 
Long since when summer ceased, 
And men rose up from feast. 

And warm west wind grew east, and warm day night. 



II 



"Come snow, come wind or thunder 

High up in air, 
I watch my face, and wonder 

At my bright hair; 
Nought else exalts or grieves 
The rose at heart, that heaves 

With love of her own leaves and lips that pair. 

"She knows not loves that kissed her 

She knows not where. 
Art thou the ghost, my sister, 

White sister there. 
Am I the ghost, who knows? 
My hand, a fallen rose, 

Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care. 

"I cannot see what pleasures 
Or what pains were; 



96 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



What pale new loves and treasures 

New years will bear; 
What beam will fall, what shower, 
What grief or joy for dower; 

But one thing knows the flower; the flower is fair." 



Ill 



Glad, but not flushed with gladness, 

Since joys go by; 
Sad, but not bent with sadness, 

Since sorrows die; 
Deep in the gleaming glass 
She sees all past things pass, 

And all sweet life that was lie down and die. 

Thers glowing ghosts of flowers 

Draw dov/n, draw nigh; 
And wings of swift spent hours 

Take flight and fly; 
She sees by formless gleams. 
She hears across cold streams, 

Dead mouths of many dreams that sing and sigh. 

Face fallen and white throat lifted. 

With sleepless eye 
She sees old loves that drifted, 

She knew not why. 
Old loves and faded fears 
Float down a stream that hears 

The flowing of all men's tears beneath the sky. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 97 

EROTION. 

Sweet for a little even to fear, and sweet, 

love, to lay down fear at love's fair feet; 
Shall not some fiery memory of his breath 
Lie sweet on lips that touch the lips of death? 
Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free; 
Love me no more, but love my love of thee. 
Love where thou wilt, and live thy life; and I, 
One thing I can, and one love cannot — die. 

Pass from me; yet thine arms, thine eyes, thine hair, 

Feed my desire and deaden my despair. 

Yet once more ere time change us, ere my cheek 

Whiten, ere hope be dumb or sorrow speak, 

Yet once more ere thou hate me, one full kiss; 

Keep other hours for others, save me this. 

Yea, and I will not (if it please thee) weep. 

Lest thou be sad; I will but sigh, and sleep. 

Sweet, does death hurt? thou canst not do me wrong: 

1 shall not lack thee, as I loved thee, long. 
Hast thou not given me above all that live 
Joy, and a little sorrow shalt not give? 
What even though fairer fingers of strange girls 
Pass nestling through thy beautiful boy's curls 
As mine did, or those curled lithe lips of thine 
Meet theirs as these, all theirs come after mine; 
And though I were not, though I be not, best, 

I have loved and love thee more than all the rest. 
O love, O lover, loose or hold me fast, 
I had thee first, whoever have thee last; 
Fairer or not, what need I know, what care? 
To thy fair bud my blossom once seemed fair. 
Why am I fair at all before thee, why 
At all desired? seeing thoH art fair, not I. 
I shall be glad of tkee, O fairest head, 



98 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Alive, alone, without thee, with thee, dead; 

I shall remember while the light lives yet. 

And in the night-time I shall not forget. 

Though (as thou wilt) thou leave me ere life leave, 

I will not, for thy love I will not, grieve; 

Not as they use who love not more than I, 

Who love not as I love thee though I die; 

And though thy lips, once mine, be oftener prest 

To many another brow and balmier breast. 

And sweeter arms, or sweeter to thy mind. 

Lull thee or lure, more fond thou wilt not find. 



IN MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

Back to the fiower-town, side by side, 

The bright months bring, 
New-born, the bridegroom and the bride, 

Freedom and spring. 

The sweet land laughs from sea to sea, 

Filled full of sun; 
All things come back to her, being free; 

All things but one. 

In many a tender wheaten plot 

Flowers that were dead 
Live, and old suns revive; but not 

That holier head. 

By this white wandering waste of sea. 

Far north, I hear 
One face shall never turn to me 

As once this year: 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Shall never smile and turn and rest 

On mine as there, 
Nor one most sacred hand be prest 

Upon my hair. 

I came as one whose thoughts half linger, 

Half run before; 
The youngest to the oldest singer 

That England bore. 

I found him whom I shall not find 

Till all grief end, 
In holiest age our mightiest mind, 

Father and friend. 

But thou, if anything endure, 

If hope there be, 
O spirit that man's life left pure, 

Man's death set free. 

Not with disdain of days that were 

Look earthward now; 
Let dreams revive the reverend hair, 

The imperial brow; 

Come back in sleep, for in the life 

Where thou art not 
We find none like thee. Time and strife 

And the world's lot. 

Move thee no more; but love at least 

And reverent heart 
May move thee, royal and released. 

Soul, as thou art. 



99 



100 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

And thou, his Florence, to thy trust 

Receive and keep, 
Keep safe his dedicated dust, 

His sacred sleep. 

So shall thy lovers, come from far, 

Mix with thy name 
As morning-star with evening-star 

His faultless fame. 



BEFORE DAWN 

Sweet life, if life were stronger, 
Earth clear of years that wrong her 

Then two things might live longer 
Two sweeter things than they; 

Delight, the rootless flower. 

And love, the bloomless bower; 

Delight that lives an hour, 
And love that lives a day. 

From evensong to daytime. 
When April melts in Maytime, 
Love lengthens out his playtime, 

Love lessens breath by breath, 
And kiss by kiss grows older 
On listless throat or shoulder 
Turned sidewise now, turned colder 

Than life that dreams of death. 

This one thing once worth giving 
Life gave, and seemed worth living; 
Sin sweet beyond forgiving 
And brief beyond regret: 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS loi 

To laugh and love together 
And weave with foam and feather 
And wind and words the tether 
Our memories play with yet. 

Ah, one thing worth beginning, 
One thread in life worth spinning, 
Ah sweet, one sin worth sinning 

With all .the whole soul's will ; 
To lull you till one stilled you, 
To kiss you till one killed you, 
To feed you till one filled you. 

Sweet lips, if love could fill; 

To hunt sweet Love and lose him 
Between white arms and bosom, 
Between the bud and blossom. 

Between your throat and chin; 
To say of shame — what is it? 
Of virtue — we can miss it. 
Of sin — we can but kiss it, 

And it's no longer sin: 

To feel the strong soul, stricken 
Through fleshly pulses, quicken 
Beneath swift sighs that thicken, 

Soft hands and lips that smite; 
Lips that no love can tire. 
With hands that sting like fire, 
Weaving the web Desire 

To snare the bird Delight. 

But love so lightly plighted, 
Our love with torch unlighted, 
Paused near us unaffrighted, 
Who found and left him free; 



102 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

None, seeing us cloven in sunder, 
Will weep or laugh or wonder; 
Light love stands clear of thunder. 
And safe from winds at sea. 

As, when late larks give warning, 
Of dying lights and dawning, 
Night murmurs to the morning, 

"Lie still, O love, lie still;" 
And half her dark limbs cover, 
The white limbs of her lover. 
With amorous plumes that hover 

And fervent lips that chill; 

As scornful day represses 
Night's void and vain caresses, 
And from her cloudier tresses 

Unwinds the gold of his. 
With limbs from limbs dividing 
And breath by breath subsiding; 
For love has no abiding, 

But dies before the kiss. 

So hath it been, so be it; 
For who shall live and flee it? 
But look that no man see it 

Or hear it unaware; 
Lest all who love and choose him 
See Love, and so refuse him; 
For all who find him lose him, 

But all have found him fair. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 103 

DOLORES. 
(notre-dame des sept douleurs.) 

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel 

Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour: 
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel 

Red mouth like a venomous flower; 
When these are gone by with their glories, 

What shall rest of thee then, what remain, 
O mystic and sombre Dolores 

Our Lady of Pain? 

Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin; 

But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, 
Seven ages v/ould fail thee to purge in, 

And then they would haunt thee in heaven: 
Fierce midnights and famishing morrows. 

And the loves that complete and control 
All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows 

That wear out the soul. 

O garment not golden but gilded, 

O garden where all men may dwell, 
O tower not of ivory, but builded 

By hands that reach heaven from hell; 
O mystical rose of the fire, 

O house not of gold but of gain, 
O house of unquenchable fire, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

O lips full of lust and of laughter, 

Curled snakes that are fed from my breast 

Bite hard, lest remembrance come after 
And press with new lips where you pressed. 



104 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

For my heart too springs up at the pressure 
Mine eyehds too moisten and burn; 

Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure, 
Ere pain come in turn. 

In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's. 

Out of sight though they lie of to-day, 
There have been and there yet shall be sorrows, 

That smite not and bite not in play. 
The life and the love thou despisest. 

These hurt us indeed, and in vain, 
O wise among women, and wisest. 

Our Lady of Pain. 

Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories 

That stung thee, what visions that smote? 
Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores, 

When desire took thee first by the throat? 
What bud was the shell of a blossom 

That all men may smell to and pluck? 
What milk fed thee first at what bosom? 

What sins gave thee suck? 

We shift and bedeck and bedrape us, 

Thou art noble and nude and antique; 
Libitina thy mother, Priapus 

Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek, 
We play with light loves in the portal, 

And wince and relent and refrain; 
Loves die, and we know thee immortal. 

Our Lady of Pain. 

Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges; 

Thou' art fed with perpetual breath, 
And alive after infinite changes, 

And fresh from the kisses of death; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Of languors rekindled and rallied, 

Of barren delights and unclean, 
Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid 

And poisonous queen. 

Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you? 

Men touch them, and change in a trice 
The lilies and languors of virtue 

For the raptures and roses of vice; 
Those lie where thy foot on the floor is, 

These crown and caress thee and chain, 
O splendid and sterile Dolores, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

There are sins it may be to discover, 

There are deeds it may be to delight. 
What new work wilt thou find for thy lover? 

What new passions for daytime or night? 
What spells that they know not a word of 

Whose lives are as leaves overblown? 
What tortures undreamt of, unheard of. 

Unwritten, unknown? 

Ah beautiful passionate body 

That never has ached with a heart! 
On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody. 

Though they sting till it shudder and smart, 
More kind than the love we adore is, 

They hurt not the heart or the brain, 
O bitter and tender Dolores, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

As our kisses relax and redouble. 

From the lips and the foam and the fangs 

Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble, 
No dream of impossible pangs? 



105 



I06 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

With the sweet of the sins of old ages 
Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore? 

Too sweet is the rind, say the sages, 
Too bitter the core. 

Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time, 
And bared all thy beauties to one? 

Ah, where shall we go then for pastime. 
If the worst that can be has been done? 

But sweet as the rind was the core is; 
We are fain of thee still, we are fain, 

sanguine and subtle Dolores, 
Our Lady of Pain. 

By the hunger of change and emotion, 

By the thirst of unbearable things, 
By despair, the twin-born of devotion, 

By the pleasure that winces and stings, 
The delight that consumes the desire, 

The desire that outruns the delight, 
By the cruelty deaf as a fire 

And blind as the night. 

By the ravenous teeth that have smitten 
Through the kisses that blossom and bud, 

By the lips intertwisted and bitten 
Till the foam has a savor of blood, 

By the pulse as it rises and falters, 

By the hands as they slacken and strain, 

1 adjure thee, respond from thine altars, 
Our Lady of Pain. 

Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining 
The light fire in the veins of a boy? 

But he comes to thee sad, without feigning, 
Who has wearied of sorrow and joy; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Less careful of labor and glory 

Than the elders whose hair has uncurled; 
And young, but with fancies as hoary 

And grey as the world. 

I have passed from the outermost portal 

To the shrine where a sin is a prayer; 
What care though the service be mortal? 

O our lady of Torture, what care? 
All thine the last wine that I pour is, 

The last in the chalice we drain, 
O fierce and luxurious Dolores, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

All thine the new wine of desire. 

The fruit of four lips as they clung 
Till the hair and the eyelids took fire, 

The foam of a serpentine tongue, 
The froth of the serpents of pleasure. 

More salt than the foam of the sea. 
Now felt as a flame, now at leisure 

As wine shed for me. 

Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen. 

Marked cross from the womb and perverse! 
They have found out the secret to cozen 

The gods that constrain us and curse; 
They alone, they are wise, and none other; 

Give me place, even me, in their train, 
O my sister, my spouse, and my mother, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

For the crown of our life as it closes 
Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; 

No thorns go as deep as a rose's, 
And love is more cruel than lust. 



107 



I08 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Time turns the old days to derision, 

Our loves into corpses or wives; 
And marriage and death and division 

Make barren our lives. 

And pale from the past we draw nigh thee 

And satiate with comfortless hours; 
And we know thee, how all men belie thee, 

And we gather the fruit of thy flowers; 
The passion that slays and recovers, 

The pangs and the kisses that rain 
On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

The desire of thy furious embraces 

Is more than the wisdom of years, 
On the blossom though blood lie in traces, 

Though the foliage be sodden with tears. 
For the lords in whose keeping the door is 

That opens on all who draw breath 
Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores, 

The myrtle to death. 

And they laughed, changing hands in the measure, 

And they mixed and made peace after strife; 
Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure; 

Death tingled with blood, and was life. 
Like lovers they melted and tingled, 

In the dusk of thine innermost fame; 
In the darkness they murmured and mingled, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

In a twilight where virtues are vices, 
In thy chapels, unknown of the sun. 

To a tune that enthralls and entices, ♦ 

They were wed, and the train were as one. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 109 

For the tune from thine altar hath sounded 
Since God bade the world's work begin, 

And the fume of thine incense abounded, 
To sweeten the sin. 

Love listens, and paler than ashes, 

Through his curls as the crown on them slips, 
Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes. 

And laughs with insatiable lips. 
Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses, 

With music that scares the profane; 
Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle. 

Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive; 
In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle, 

In his hands all thy cruelties thrive. 
In the daytime thy voice shall go through him, 

In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache; 
Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him 

Asleep and awake. 

Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses 

With juice not of fruit nor of bud; 
When the sense in the spirit reposes, 

Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood. 
Thine, thine the one grace we implore is, 

Who would live and not languish or feign, 
O sleepless and deadly Dolores, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber. 

In a lull of the fires of thy life. 
Of the days without name, without number, 

When thy will stung the world into strife, 



no SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion 
Smote kings as they revelled in Rome; 

And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian, 
Foam- white, from the foam? 

When thy lips had such lovers to flatter, 

When the city lay red from thy rods. 
And thine hands were as arrows to scatter 

The children of change and their gods; 
When the blood of thy foemen made fervent 

A sand never moist from the main, 
As one smote them, their lord and thy servant, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

On sands by the storm never shaken, 

Nor wet from the washing of tides; 
Nor by foam of the waves overtaken, 

Nor winds that the thunder bestrides; 
But red from the print of thy paces. 

Made smooth for the world and its lords, 
Ringed round with a flame of fair faces, 

And splendid with swords. 

There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure, 

Drew bitter and perilous breath; 
There torments laid hold on the treasure 

Of limbs too delicious for death; 
WTien thy gardens were lit with live torches; 

When the world was a steed for thy rein; 
When the nations lay prone in thy porches, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

When, with flame all around him aspirant, 
Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands, 

The implacable beautiful tyrant, 

Rose-crowned, having death in his aands; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS III 

And a sound as the sound of loud water 
Smote far through the flight of the fires, 

And mixed with the lightning of slaughter 
A thunder of lyres. 

Dost thou dream of what was and no more is, 

The old kingdoms of earth and the kings? 
Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores, 

For these, in a world of new things? 
But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate. 

No hunger compel to complain 
Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

As of old when the world's heart was lighter. 

Through thy garments the grace of thee glows, 
The white wealth of thy body made whiter 

By the blushes of amorous blows, 
And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers, 

And branded by kisses that bruise; 
When all shall be gone that now lingers. 

Ah, what shall we lose? 

Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion, 

And thy limbs are as melodies yet, 
And move to the music of passion 

With lithe and lascivious regret. 
What ailed us, O gods, to desert you 

For greeds that refuse and restrain? 
Come down and redeem us from virtue, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

All shrines that were Vestal are flameless; 

But the flame has not fallen from this, 
Though obscure be the god, and though nameless 

The eyes and the hair that we kiss; 



1 1 2 SIVINB URNE'S POEMS 

Low fires that love sits by and forges 
Fresh heads for his arrows and thine; 

Hair loosened and soiled amid orgies 
With kisses and wine. 

Thy skin changes country and color, 

And shrivels or swells to a snake's. 
Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller, 

We know it, the flames and the flakes, 
Red brands on it smitten and bitten, 

Round skies where a star is a stain. 
And the leaves with thy litanies written, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

On thy bosom though many a kiss be. 

There are none such as knew it of old. 
Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe, 

Male ringlets or feminine gold 
That thy lips met with under the statue, 

Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves 
From the eyes of the garden god at you 

Across the fig-leaves? 

Then still, through dry seasons, and moister, 

One god had a wreath to his shrine; 
The love was the pearl of his oyster,* 

And Venus rose red out of wine. 
We have all done amiss, choosing rather 

Such loves as the wise gods disdain; 
Intercede for us thou with thy father, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

In spring he had crowns of his garden, 
Red corn in the heat of the year. 



*"Nam te prsecipue in suis urbibus colit ora Hellespontia, 
caeteris ostreosior oris." — Catull. Carm xvili. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Then hoary green olives that harden 

When the grape-blossom freezes with fear; 

And milk-budded myrtles with Venus 
And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod; 

And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us, 
A visible God." 

What broke off the garlands that girt you? 

What sundered you spirit and clay? 
Weak sins yet alive are as virtue 

To the strength of the sins of that day. 
For dried is the blood of thy lover, 

Ipsithilla, contracted the vein; 
Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover, 

Our Lady of Pain?" 

Cry aloud; for the old world is broken: 

Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest, 
And rears not the bountiful token 

And spreads not the fatherly feast. 
From the midmost of Ida, from shady 

Recesses that murmur at mora. 
They have brought and baptized her. Our Lady, 

A goddess new-bom. 

And the chaplets of old are above us. 

And the oyster-bed teems out of reach; 
Old poets outsing and outlove us. 

And Catullus makes mouths at our speech. 
Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city. 

With such lips as he sang with, again? 
Intercede for us all of thy pity. 

Our Lady of Pain. 

Out of Dindymus heavily laden 
Her lions draw bound and unfed 



113 



114 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

A mother, a mortal, a maiden, 
A queen over death and the dead. 

She is cold, and her habit is lowly. 
Her temple of branches and sods; 

Most fruitful and virginal, holy, 
A mother of gods. 

She hath wasted with fire thine high places, 

She hath hidden and marred and made sad 
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces 

Of gods that were goodly and glad. 
She slays, and her hands are not bloody; 

She moves as a moon in the wane, 
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

They shall pass and their places be taken. 

The gods and the priests that are pure. 
They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken'- 

They shall perish, and shalt thou endure? 
Death laughs, breathing close and relentless 

In the nostrils and eyelids of lust. 
With a pinch in his fingers of scentless 

And delicate dust. 

But the worm shall revive thee with kisses. 

Thou shalt change and transmute as a god 
As the rod to a serpent that hisses, 

As the serpent again to a rod. 
Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it; 

Thou shalt live until evil be slain, 
And good shall die first, said thy prophet, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it, 
Now he lies out of reach, out of breath, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS I15 

Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet. 

Sin's child by incestuous Death? 
Did he find out in fire at his waking, 

Or discern as his eyelids lost light, 
When the bands of the body were breaking 

And all came in sight? 

Who has known all the evil before us, 

Or the tyrannous secrets of time? 
Though we match not the dead men that bore uji 

At a song, at a kiss, at a crime — 
Though the heathen outface and outlive us, 

And our lives and our longings are twain — 
Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us. 

Our Lady of Pain. 

Who are we that embalm and embrace thee 

With spices and savors of song? 
What is time, that his children should face thee; 

What am I, that my lips do thee wrong? 
I could hurt thee — but pain would delight thee; 

Or caress thee — but love would repel; 
And the lovers whose lips would excite thee 

Are serpents in hell. 

Who now shall content thee as they did, 

Thy lovers, when temples were built 
And the hair of the sacrifice braided 

And the blood of the sacrifice spilt, 
In Lampsacus fervent with faces, 

In Aphaca red from thy reign, 
Who embraced thee with awful embraces, 

Our Lady of Pain? 

Where are they, Cotytto or Venus, 
Astarte or Ashtaroth, where? 



Ii6 SIVINBURNE'S POEMS 

Do their hands as we touch come between us? 

Is the breath of them hot in thy hair? 
From their Hps have thy hps taken fever, 

With the blood of their bodies gro^^^l red? 
Hast thou left upon earth a believer 

If these men are dead? 

They were purple of raiment and golden, 

Filled full of thee, fiery with wine, 
Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden, 

In marvellous chambers of thine. 
They are fled, and their footprints escape us, 

Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain, 
O daughter of Death and Priapus, 

Our Lady of Pain. 

What ails us to fear overmeasure, 

To praise thee with timorous breath, 
O mistress and mother of pleasure, 

The one thing as certain as death? 
We shall change as the things that we cherish, 

Shall fade as they faded before, 
As foam upon water shall perish, 

As sand upon shore. 

We shall know what the darkness discovers. 

If the grave-pit be shallow or deep; 
And our fathers of old, and our lovers, 

We shall know if they sleep not or sleep. 
We shall see w^hether hell be not heaven, 

Find out whether tares be not grain. 
And the joys of thee seventy times sevei^ 

Our Lady of Pain. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE. 

Here, where the world is quiet, 
Here, where all trouble seems 

Dead winds' and spent waves' riot 
In doubtful dreams of dreams; 

I watch the green field growing 

For reaping folk and sowing. 

For harvest time and mowing, 
A sleepy world of streams. 

I am tired of tears and laughter, 

And men that laugh and weep. 
Of what may come hereafter 
For men that sow to reap: 
I am weary of days and hours, 
Blown buds of barren flowers, 
Desires and dreams and powers 
And everything but sleep. 

Here life has death for neighbor, 

And far from eye or ear 
Wan waves and wet winds labor, 

Weak ships and spirits steer; 
They drive adrift, and whither 
They wot not who make thither; 
But no such winds blow hither. 

And no such things grow here. 

No growth of moor or coppice. 

No heather-flower or vine. 
But bloomless buds of poppies. 

Green grapes of Proserpine, 



117 



ii8 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Pale beds of blowing rushes 
Where no leaf blooms or blushes, 
Save this whereout she crushes 
For dead men deadly wine. 

Pale, without name or number, 
In fruitless fields of corn, 

They bow themselves and slumber 
All night till light is born; 

And like a soul belated, 

In hell and heaven unmated. 

By cloud and mist abated 
Comes out of darkness mom. 

Though one were strong as seven, 
He too with death shall dwell. 

Nor wake with wings in heaven. 
Nor weep for pains in hell; 

Though one were fair as roses. 

His beauty clouds and closes; 

And well though love reposes. 
In the end it is not well. 

Pale, beyond porch and portal, 

Crowned with calm leaves, she stands 
Who gathers all things mortal 

With cold immortal hands; 
Her languid lips are sweeter 
Than love's who fears to greet her 
To men that mix and meet her 
From many times and lands. 

She waits for each and other. 
She waits for all men born; 

Forgets the earth her mother, 
The life of fruits and corn: 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

And spring and seed and swallow 
Take wing for her and follow 
Where summer song rings hollow 
And flowers are put to scorn. 

There go the loves that wither, 

The old loves with wearier wings; 
And all dead years draw thither, 

And all disastrous things; 
Dead dreams of days forsaken 
Blind buds that snows have shaken, 
Wild leaves that winds have taken, 
Red strays of ruined springs. 

We are not sure of sorrow, 

And joy was never sure; 

To-day will die to-morrow; 

Time stoops to no man's lure; 
And love, grown faint and fretful 
With lips but half regretful 
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful 
Weeps that no loves endure. 

From too much love of living. 
From hope and fear set free. 

We thank with brief thanksgiving 
Whatever gods may be 

That no life lives for ever; 

That dead men rise up never; 

That even the weariest river 
Winds somewhere safe to sea. 

Then star nor sun shall waken^ 
Nor any change of light: 

Nor sound of waters shaken 
Nor any sound or sight: 



119 



120 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, 
Nor days nor things diurnal; 
Only the sleep eternal 
In an eternal night. 



HESPERIA. 



Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without 
shore is, 
Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness 
of joy. 
As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the 
region of stories, 
Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved 
from a boy. 
Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of 
the present. 
Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of in- 
visible feet. 
Far out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough 
ways or pleasant. 
Is it thither the wind's wings beat? is it hither to me, O 
my sweet? 
For thee, in the stream of the deep tide-wind blowing in 
with the water, 
Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from 
the west. 
Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as 
a daughter 
Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water 
at rest. 
Out of the distance of dreams, as a dream that abides after 
slumber, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 12 1 

Strayed from the fugitive flock of the night, when the 
moon overhead 
Wanes in the wan waste heights of the heaven, and stars 
without number 
Die without sound, and are spent like lamps that are 
burnt by the dead. 
Comes back to me, stays by me, lulls me with touch of 
forgotten caresses. 
One warm dream clad about with a fire as of life that 
endures; 
The delight of thy face, and the sound of thy feet, and the 
wind of thy tresses. 
And all of a man that regrets, and all of a maid that 
allures. 
But thy bosom is warm for my face and profound as a 
manifold flower, 
Thy silence as music, thy voice as an odor that fades in 
a flame; 
Not a dream, not a dream is the kiss of thy mouth, and 
the bountiful hour 
That makes me forget what was sin, and would make me 
forget were it shame. 
Thine eyes that are quiet, thine hands that are tender, thy 
lips that are loving, 
Comfort and cool me as dew in the dawn of a moon like 
a dream; 
\nd my heart yearns baffled and blind, moved vainly toward 
thee, and moving 
As the refluent seaweed moves in the languid exuberant 
stream, 
i^air as a rose is on earth, as a rose under water in prison. 
That stretches and swings to the slow passionate pulse 
of the sea, 
riosed up from the air and the sun, but alive, as a ghost 
re-arisen, 
Pale as the love that revives as a ghost re-arisen in me. 



122 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial 
places 
Full of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the 
dead, 
Where the fortunate islands are lit with the light of inef- 
fable faces. 
And the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and 
sunset is red. 
Come back to redeem and release me from love that recalls 
and represses. 
That cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent has 
eaten his fill ; 
From the bitter delights of the dark, and the feverish, the 
furtive caresses 
That murder the youth in a man or ever his heart have 
its will. 
Thy lips cannot laugh and thine eyes cannot weep; thou 
are pale as a rose is, 
Paler and sweeter than leaves that cover the blush of the 
! bud; 

'And the heart of the flower is compassion, and pity the core 
it encloses. 
Pity, not love, that is born of the breath and decays with 
the blood. 
As the cross that a wild nun clasps till the edge of it bruises 
her bosom. 
So love wounds as we grasp it, and blackens and burns 
as a flame; 
I have loved overmuch in my life: when the live bud bursts 
with the blossom. 
Bitter as ashes or tears is the fruit, and the wine thereof 
shame. 
As a heart that its anguish divides is the green bud cloven 
asunder ; 
As the blood of a man self-slain is the flush of the leaves 
that allure; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



123 



And the perfume as poison and wine to the brain, a delight 
and a wonder; 
And the thorns are too sharp for a boy; too slight for 
a man, to endure. 
Too soon did I love it, and lost love's rose; and I cared 
not for glory's: 
Only the blossoms of sleep and of pleasure were mixed 
in my hair. 
Was it myrtle or poppy thy garland was woven with, O 
my Dolores? 
Was it pallor or slumber, or blush as of blood, that I foimd 
in thee fair? 
For desire is a respite from love, and the flesh not the heart 
is her fuel; 
She was sweet to me once, who am fled and escaped from 
^' e rage of her reign; 
Who benold as of old time at hand as I turn, with her 
mouth growing cruel, 
And flushed as with wine with the blood of her lovers, 
Our Lady of Pain. 
Low down where the thicket is thicker with thorns than 
with leaves in the summer, 
In the brake is a gleaming of eyes and a hissing of 
tongues that I knew; 
And the lithe long throats of her snakes reach round her, 
their mouths overcome her. 
And her lips grow cool with their foam, made moist as 
a desert with dew. 
With the thirst and the hunger of lust though her beautiful 
lips be so bitter 
With the cold foul foam of the snakes they soften and 
redden and smile; 
And her fierce mouth sweetens, her eyes wax wide and her 
eyelashes glitter. 
And she laughs with a savor of blood in her face, and 
a savor of guile. 



124 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

She laughs, and her hands reach hither, her hair blows 
hither and hisses, 
As a low-lit flame in a wind, back-blown till it shudder 
and leap; 
Let her lips not again lay hold on my soul, nor her poisonous 
kisses. 
To consume it alive and divide from thy bosom, Our 
Lady of Sleep. 
Ah daughter of sunset and slumber, if now it return into 
prison. 
Who shall redeem it anew? but we, if thou wilt, let us fly; 
Let us take to us, now that the white skies thrill with a 
moon unarisen. 
Swift horses of fear or of love, take flight and depart 
and not die. 
They are swifter than dreams, they are stronger than death; 
there is none that hath ridden, 
None that shall ride in the dim strange ways of his life 
as we ride: 
By the meadows of memory, the highlands of hope, and the 
shore that is hidden. 
Where life breaks loud and imseen, a sonorous invisible 
tide; 
By the sands where sorrow has trodden, the salt pools 
bitter and sterile. 
By the thundering reef and the low sea-wall and the 
channel of years. 
Our wild steeds press on the night, strain hard through 
pleasure and peril. 
Labor and listen and pant not or pause for the peril 
that nears; 
And the sound of them trampling the way cleaves night as 
an arrow asunder, 
And slow by the sand-hill and swift by the down with 
its glimpses of grass 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



125 



Sudden and steady the music, as eight hoofs trample and 

thunder, 
Rings in the ear of the low blind wind of the night as 

we pass; 
Shrill shrieks in our faces the blind bland air that was mute 

as a maiden, 
Stung into storm by the speed of our passage, and deaf 

where we ps.st; 
And our spirits too burn as we bound, thine holy but mine 

heavy-laden. 
As we burn with the fire of our flight; ah, love, shall we win 

at the last? 



FELISE. 

Mais oil sont les neiges d'antan. 

What shall be said between us here, 
Among the downs, between the trees, 

In fields that knew our feet last year, 
In sight of quiet sands and seas. 
This year, Felise? 

Who knows what word were best to say? 

For last year's leaves lie dead and red 
On this sweet day, in this green May, 

And barren com makes bitter bread. 

What shall be said? 

Here as last year the fields begin, 
A fire of flowers and glowing grass; 

The old fields we laughed and lingered in. 
Seeing each our souls in last year's glass, 
Felise, alas! 



126 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep, 
Not we, though this be as it is? 

For love awake or love asleep 
Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss, 
A song like this. 

I that have slept awake, and ycu 
Sleep, who last year were well awake. 

Though love do all that love can do, 
My heart will never ache or break 
For your heart's sake. 

The great sea, faultless as a flower. 

Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze, 

And laughs with love of the amorous hour, 
I found you fairer once, Felise, 
Than flowers or seas. 

We played at bondsman and at queen; 

But as the days change men change too ; 
I find the grey sea's notes of green, 

The green sea's fervent flakes of blue, 

More fair than you. 

Your beauty is not over fair 

Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise. 
The smell of flowers in all your hair 

Allures not now; no sigh replies 

If your heart sighs. 

But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound, 
You find love's new name good enough. 

Less sweet I find it than I found 
The sweetest name that ever love 
Grew weary of. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake 
Grown tame and glad to be caressed. 

With lips athirst for mine to slake 

Their tender fever! who had guessed 
You loved me best? 

I had died for this last year, to know 
You loved me. Who shall turn on fate? 

I care not if love come or go 

Now, though your love seek mine for mate. 
It is too late. 

The dust of many strange desires 
Lies deep between us; in our eyes 

Dead smoke of perishable fires 
Flickers, a fume in air and skies, 
A steam of sighs. 

You loved me and you loved me not; 

A little, much, and overmuch. 
Will you forget as I forgot? 

Let all dead things lie dead; none such 

Are soft to touch. 

I love you and I do not love. 

Too much, a little, not at all; 
Too much, and never yet enough. 

Birds quick to fledge and fly at call 

Are quick to fall. 

And these love longer now than men, 
And larger loves than ours are these. 

No diver brings up love again 

Dropped once, my beautiful Felise, 
In such cold seas. 



127 



128 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Gone deeper than all plummets sound, 
Where in the dim green dayless day 

The life of such dead thing lies bound 
As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray 
And castaway. 

Can I forget? yea, that can I, 
And that can all men; so will you, 

Alive, or later, when you die. 

Ah, but the love you plead was true? 
Was mine not too? 

I loved you for that name of yours 
Long ere we met, and long enough. 

Now that one thing of all endures — 
The sweetest name that ever love 
Waxed weary of. 

Like colors in the sea, like flowers. 
Like a cat's splendid circled eyes 

That wax and wane with love for hours, 
Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies, 
And soft like sighs — 

And all these only like your name. 
And your name full of all of these. 

I say it, and it sounds the same — 
Save that I say it now at ease. 
Your name, Felise. 

I said "she must be swift and white 
And subtly warm, and half perverse 

And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite. 
And like a snake's love lithe and fierce." 
Men have guessed worse. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 129 

Yyhsii was the song I made of you 

Here where the grass forgets our feet 
As afternoon forgets the dew? 
Ah that such sweet things should be fleet, 

Such fleet things sweet! 

As afternoon forgets the dew, 

As time in time forgets all men. 
As our old place forgets us two, 

Who might have turned to one thing then, 

But not again. 

O lips that mine have grown into 

Like April's kissing May, 
O fervent eyelids letting through 
Those eyes the greenest of things blue. 

The bluest of things grey. 

If you were I and I were you. 

How could I love you, say? 
How could the roseleaf love the rue. 
The day love nightfall and her dew. 

Though night may love the day? 

You loved it may be more than I; 

We know not; love is hard to seize, 
And all things are not good to try; 

And lifelong loves the worst of these 

For us, Felise. 

Ah, take the season and have done. 

Love well the hour and let it go: 
Two souls may sleep and wake up one, 

Or dream they wake and find it so, 

And then — you know. 



130 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Kiss me once hard as though a flame 
Lay on my lips and made them fire; 

The same lips now, and not the same; 
What breath shall fill and re-inspire 
A dead desire? 

The old song sounds hollower in mine ear 
Than thin keen sounds of dead men's speech— 

A noise one hears and would not hear; 
Too strong to die, too weak to reach 
From wave to beach. 

We stand on either side the sea, 

Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean 
I toward you, you toward me; 

But what hears either save the keen 

Grey sea between? 

A year divides us, love from love. 

Though you loved now, though I loved then. 
The gulf is strait, but deep enough; 

Who shall recross, who among men 

Shall cross again? 

Love was a jest last year, you said, 
And what lives surely, surely dies. 

Even so; but now that love is dead, 
Shall love rekindle from wet eyes, 
From subtle sighs? 

For many loves are good to see; 

Mutable loves, and loves perverse; 
But there is nothing, nor shall be. 

So sweet, so wicked, but my verse 

Can dream of worse. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 131 

For we that sing and you that love 

Know that which man may, only we. 
The rest live under us; above, 

Live the great gods in heaven, and see 

What things shall be. 

So this thing is and must be so ; 

For man dies, and love also dies. 
Though yet love's ghost moves to and fro 

The sea-green mirrors of your eyes, 

And laughs, and lies. 

Eyes colored like a water-flower. 

And deeper than the green sea's glass; 

Eyes that remember one sweet hour — 
In vain we swore it should not pass; 
In vain, alas! 

Ah my Felise, if love or sin. 

If shame or fear could hold it fast. 
Should we not hold it? Love wears thin. 

And they laugh well who laugh the last. 

Is it not past? 

The gods, the gods are stronger; time 
Falls down before them, all men's knees 

Bow, all men's prayers and sorrows climb 
Like incense towards them; yea, for these 
Are gods, Felise. 

Immortal are they, clothed with powers^ 

Not to be comforted at all; 
Lords over all the fruitless hours; 

Too great to appease, too high to appal, 

Too far to call. 



132 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 
• 

For none shall move the most high gods, 
Who are most sad, being cruel; none 

Shall break or take away the rods 

Wherewith they scourge us, not as one 
That smites a son. 

By many a name of many a creed 
We have called upon them, since the sands 

Fell through time's hour-glass first, a seed 
Of life; and out of many lands 
Have we stretched hands. 

When have they heard us? who hath known 
Their faces, climbed unto their feet, 

Felt them and found them? Laugh or groan, 
Doth heaven remurmur and repeat 
Sad sounds or sweet? 

Do the stars answer? in the night 
Have ye found comfort? or by day 

Have ye seen gods? What hope, what light, 
Falls from the farthest starriest way 
On you that pray? 

Are the skies wet because we weep, 

Or fair because of any mirth? 
Cry out; they are gods; perchance they sleep; 

Cry; thca shalt know what prayers are v/orth, 

Thou dust and earth. 

O earth, thou art fair; O dust, thou art great 
O laughing lips and lips that mourn, 

Pray, till ye feel the exceeding weight 
Of God's intolerable scorn. 
Not to be borne. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 133 

Behold, there is no grief like this; 

The barren blossom of thy prayer, 
Thou shalt find out how sweet it is. 

O fools and blind, what seek ye there, 

High up in the air? 

Ye must have gods, the friends of men, 

Merciful gods, compassionate. 
And these shall answer you again. 

Will ye beat always at the gate. 

Ye fools of fate? 

Ye fools and blind; for this is sure. 

That all ye shall not live, but die. 
Lo, what thing have ye found endure? 

Or what thing have ye found on high 

Past the blind sky? 

The ghosts of words and dusty dreams. 

Old memories, faiths infirm and dead. 
Ye fools; for which among you deems 

His prayer can alter green to red 

Or stones to bread? 

Why should ye bear with hopes and fears 

Till all these things be drawn in one, 
The sound of iron-footed years. 

And all the oppression that is done 

Under the sun? 

Ye might end surely, surely pass 

Out of tlie multitude of things. 
Under the dust, beneath the grass. 

Deep in dim death, where no thought stings, 

No record clings. 



134 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

No memory more of love or hate, 

No trouble, nothing that aspires, 
No sleepless labor thwarting fate. 

And thwarted; where no travail tires, 

Where no faith fires. 

All passes, nought that has been is. 
Things good and evil have one end. 

Can anything be otherwise 

Though all men swear all things would mend 
With God to friend? 

Can ye beat off one wave with prayer, 
Can ye move mountains? bid the flower 

Take flight and turn to a bird in the air? 
Can ye hold fast for shine or shower 
One wingless hour? 

Ah sweet, and we too, can we bring 
One sigh back, bid one smile revive? 

Can God restore one mined thing. 
Or he who slays our souls alive 
Make dead things thrive? 

Two gifts perforce he has given us yet. 

Though sad things stay and glad things fly; 

Two gifts he has given us, to forget 
All glad and sad things that go by, 
And then to die. 

We know not whether death be good. 

But life at least it will not be: 
Men will stand saddening as we stood, 

Watch the same fields and skies as we 

And the same sea. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Let this be said between us here, 

One love grows green when one turns grey; 
This year knows nothing of last year: 

To-morrow has no more to say 

To yesterday. 

Live and let live, as I will do. 
Love and let love, and so will I. 

But, sweet, for me no more with you: 
Not while I live, not though I die. 
Good-night, good-bye. 



135 



AN INTERLUDE. 

In the greenest growth of the Maytime, 
I rode where the woods were wet. 

Between the dawn and the daytime; 
The spring was glad that we met. 

There was something the season wanted. 

Though the ways and the woods smelt sweet; 

The breath at your lips that panted, 
The pulse of the grass at your feet. 

You came, and the sun came after. 
And the green grew golden above; 

And the flag-flowers lightened with laughter. 
And the meadow sweet shook with love. 

Your feet in the full-grown grasses 
Moved soft as a weak wind blows; 

You passed me as April passes, 
With face made out of a rose. 



136 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

By the stream where the stems were slender, 
Your bright foot paused at the sedge; 

It might be to watch the tender 

Light leaves in the springtime hedge. 

On boughs that the sweet month blanches, 

With flowery frost of May: 
It might be a bird in the branches, 

It might be a thorn in the way. 

I waited to watch you linger 

With foot drawn back from the dew, 

Till a sunbeam straight like a finger 
Struck sharp through the leaves at you. 

And a bird overhead sang Follow, 
And a bird to the right sang Here; 

And the arch of the leaves was hollow. 
And the meaning of May was clear. 

I saw where the sun's hand pointed, 
I knew what the bird's note said ; 

By the dawn and the dewfall anointed, 
You were queen by the gold on your head. 

As the glimpse of a bumt-out ember 

Recalls a regret of the sun, 
I remember, forget, and remember 

What Love saw done and undone. 

I remember the way we parted, 

The day and the way we met; 
You hoped we were both broken-hearted, 

And knew we should both forget. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 137 

And May with her world in flower 

Seemed still to murmur and smile 
As you murmured and smiled for an hour; 

I saw you turn at the stile. 

A hand like a white wood-blossom 

You lifted, and waved, and passed, 
With head hung down to the bosom. 

And pale, as it seemed, at last. 

And the best and the worst of this is 

That neither is most to blame 
If you've forgotten my kisses 

And I've forgotten your name. 



SAPPHICS. 



All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids, 
Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather, 
Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron 
Stood and beheld me. 

Then to me so lying awake a vision 
Came without sleep over the seas and touched me, 
Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too, 
Full of the vision. 

Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, 
Saw the hair unbound, and the feet unsandalled 
Shine as fire of sunset on western waters; 
Saw the reluctant 



138 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her, 
Looking always, looking with necks reverted, 
Back to Lesbos, back to the hills where under 
Shone Mitylene; 

Heard the flying feet of the Loves behind her 
Make a sudden thunder upon the waters. 
As the thunder flung from the strong unclosing 
Wings of a great wind. 

So the goddess fled from her place, with awful 
Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her; 
While behind a clamour of singing women 
Severed the twilight. 

Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion! 
All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish, 
Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo; 
Fear was upon them, 

While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not. 
Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent, 
None endured the sound of her song for weeping; 
Laurel by laurel, 

Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead. 
Round her woven tresses and ashen temples 
White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer, 
Ravaged with kisses, 

Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever. 
Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite 
Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song. 
Yea, by her name too 



139 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Called her, saying, "Turn to me, O my Sappho;" 
Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not 
Tears or laughter darken immortal eyelids, 
Heard not about her 

Fearful fitful wings of the doves departing. 
Saw not how the bosom of Aphrodite 
Shook with weeping, saw not her shaken raiment, 
Saw not her hands wrung; 



Saw the Lesbians kissing across their smitten 
Lutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings, 
Mouth to mouth and hand upon hand, her chosen, 
Fairer than all men; 

Only saw the beautiful lips and fingers. 
Full of songs and kisses and little whispers, 
Full of music; only beheld among them 
Soar, as a bird soars 

Newly fledged, her visible song, a marvel. 
Made of perfect sound and exceeding passion, 
Sweetly shapen, terrible, full of thunders. 
Clothed with the wind's wings. 

Then rejoiced she, laughing with love, and scattered 
Roses, awful roses of holy blossom; 
Then the Loves thronged sadly with hidden faces 
Round Aphrodite, 

Then the Muses, stricken at heart, were silent; 
Yea, the gods waxed pale; such a song was that song. 
All reluctant, all with a fresh repulsion. 
Fled from before her. 



I40 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



All withdrew long since, and the land was barren, 
Full of fruitless women and music only. 
Now perchance, when winds are assuaged at sunset, 
Lulled at the dewfall, 

By the grey sea-side, unassuaged, unheard of, 
Unbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight, 
Ghosts of outcast women return lamenting. 
Purged not in Lethe, 

Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singing 
Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven, 
Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity, 
Hearing, to hear them. 



MADONNA MIA. 

Under green apple boughs 
That never a storm will rouse, 
My lady hath her house 

Between two bowers; 
In either of the twain 
Red roses full of rain; 
She hath for bondwomen 

All kind of flowers. 

She hath no handmaid fair 
To draw her curled gold hair 
Through rings of gold that bear 

Her whole hair's weight; 
She hath no maids to stand 
Gold-clothed on either hand; 
In all the great green land 

None is so great. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 141 

She hath no more to wear 
But one white hood of vair 
Drawn over eyes and hair, 

Wrought with strange gold, 
Made for some great queen's head. 
Some fair great queen since dead; 
A.nd one strait gown of red 

Against the cold. 

Beneath her eyelids deep 
Love lying seems asleep, 
Love, swift to wake, to weep, 

To laugh to gaze; 
Her breasts are like white birds, 
And all her gracious words 
As water-grass to herds 

In the June-days. 

To her all dews that fall 

And rains are musical; 

Her flowers are fed from all, 

Her joys from these; 
In the deep-feather firs 
Their gift of joy is hers. 
In the least breath that stirs 

Across the trees. 

She grows with greenest leaves, 
Ripens with reddest sheaves, 
Forgets, remembers, grieves, 

And is not sad; 
The quiet lands and skies 
Leave light upon her eyes; 
None knows her, weak or wise. 

Or tired or glad. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

None knows, none understands, 
What flowers are like her hands; 
Though you should search all lands 

Wherein time grows. 
What snows are like her feet. 
Though his eyes burn with heat 
Through gazing on my sweet. 

Yet no man knows 

Only this thing is said; 
That white and gold and red, 
God's three chief words, man's bread 

And oil and wine. 
Were given her for dowers, 
And kingdom of all hours. 
And grace of goodly flowers 

And various wine. 

This is my lady's praise: 
God after many days 
Wrought her in unknown ways, 

In sunset lands; 
This was my lady's birth ; 
God gave her might and mirth 
And laid his whole sweet earth 

Between her hands. 

Under deep apple-boughs 
My lady hath her house; 
She wears upon her brows 

The flower thereof; 
All saying but what God saith 
To her is as vain breath ; 
She is more strong than death, 

Being strong as love. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 143 



TO WALT WHITMAN IN AMERICA 

Send but a song oversea for^us. 

Heart of their hearts who are free, 
Heart of their singer, to be for us 

More than our singing can be; 
Ours, in the tempest at error, 
With no light but the twihght of terror; 

Send us a song oversea! 

Sweet-smelHng of pine-leaves and grasses, 
And blown as a tree through and through 

With the winds of the keen mountain-passes^ 
And tender as sun-smitten dew; 

Sharp-tongued as the winter that shakes 

The wastes of your limitless lakes, 
Wide-eyed as the sea-line's blue. 

O strong-winged soul with prophetic 
Lips hot with the bloodbeats of song 

With tremor of heartstrings magnetic. 
With thoughts as thunders in throng. 

With consonant ardors of chords 

That pierce men's souls as with swords 
And hale them hearing along, 

Make us too music, to be with us 

As a word from a world's heart warm, 

To sail the dark as a sea with us, 
Full-sailed, outsinging the storm, 

A song to put fire in our ears 

Whose burning shall burn up tears, 
Whose sign bid battle reform; 



144 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

A note in the ranks of a clarion, 

A word in the wind of cheer, 
To consume as with Hghtning the carrion 

That makes time foul for us here; 
In the air that our dead things infest 
A blast of the breath of the west, 

Till east way as west way is clear. 

Out of the sun beyond sunset, 

From the evening whence morning shall be, 
With the rollers in measureless onset. 

With the van of the storming sea, 
With the world-wide vv^ind, with the breath 
That breaks ships driven upon death. 

With the passion of all things free, 

With the sea-steeds footless and frantic, 
White myriads for death to bestride 

In the charge of the ruining Atlantic 
Where deaths by regiments ride. 

With clouds and clamors of waters, 

With a long note shriller than slaughter's 
On the furrowless fields world-wide. 

With terror, with ardor and wonder. 
With the soul of the season that wakes 

When the weight of a whole year's thunder 
In the tidestream of autumn breaks. 

Let the flight of the wide-winged word 

Come over, come in and be heard. 
Take form and fire for our sakes. 

For a continent bloodless with travail 

Here toils and brawls as it can. 
And the web of it who shall unravel 

Of all that peer on the plan; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Would fain grow men, but they grow not, 
And fain be free, but they know not 
One name for freedom and man? 

One name, not twain for division; 

One thing, not twain, from the birth; 
Spirit and substance and vision. 

Worth more than worship is worth; 
Unbeheld, unadored, undivined. 
The cause, the centre, the mind. 

The secret and sense of the earth. 

Here as a weakling in irons. 

Here as a weanling in bands 
As a prey that the stake-net environs, 

Our life that we looked for stands; 
And the man-child naked and dear. 
Democracy, turns on us here 

Eyes trembling with tremulous hands. 

It sees not what season shall bring to it 
Sweet fruit of its bitter desire; 

Few voices it hears yet sings to it. 
Few pulses of hearts reaspire; 

Foresees not time, nor forebears 

The noises of imminent years. 

Earthquake, and thunder, and fire; 

When crowned and weaponed and curbless 
It shall walk without helm or shield 

The bare burnt furrows and herbless 
Of wars last flame-stricken field. 

Till godlike, equal with time. 

It stand in the sun sublime. 

In the godhead of man revealed. 



145 



146 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Round your people and over them 

Light like raiment is drawn, 
Close as a garment to cover them 

Wrought not of mail nor of lawn: 
Here, with hope hardly to wear. 
Naked nations and bare 

Swim, sink, strike out for the dawn. 

Chains are here, and a prison, 
Kings, and subjects and shame: 

If the God upon you be arisen. 
How should our songs be the same? 

How in confusion of change, 

How shall we sing, in a strange 
Land songs praising his name? 

God is buried and dead to us 

Even the spirit of earth. 
Freedom: so have they said to us, 

Some with mocking and mirth. 
Some with heartbreak and tears: 
And a God without eyes, without ears 

Who shall sing of him dead in the birth? 

The earth god Freedom, the lonely 
Face lightening, the footprint unshod. 

Not as one man crucified only 

Nor scoured with but one life's rod: 

The soul that is substance or nations, 

Reincarnate with fresh generations; 
The great god Man, which is God. 

But in weariest of years and obscurest 
Doth it live not at heart of all things 

The one God and one spirit, a purest 
Life, fed from unstanchable springs: 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 147 

Within love; within hatred it is, 
And its seed in the stripe as the kiss, 
And in slaves is the germ, and in kings. 

Freedom we call it, for holier 

Name of the soul's there is none; 
Surelier it labors, if slowlier, 

Than the metres of star or of sun 
Slowlier than life unto breath 
Surelier than time unto death. 

It moves till its labor be done. 

Till the motion be done and the measure 

Circling through season and clime. 
Slumber and sorrow and pleasure, 

Vision of virtue and crime; 
Till consummate with conquering eyes, 
A soul disembodied, it rise 

From the body transfigured of time. 

Till it rise and remain and take station 
With the stars of the world that rejoice; 

Till the voice of its heart's exultation 
Be as theirs an invariable voice 

By no discord of evil estranged. 

By no pause by no breach in it changed 
By no clash in the chord of its choice. 

It is one with the world's generations, 
With the spirit the star and the sod: 

With the kingless and king-stricken nation, 
With the cross, and the chain, and the rod 

The most high, the most secret, most lonely, 

The earth-soul Freedom, that only 
Lives, and that only is God. 



148 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

CHIEF HUNTSMAN'S SONG 

FROM "ATALANTA IN CALYDON" 

Maiden, and mistress of the months and stars 

Now folded in the fiowerless fields of heaven, 

Goddess whom all gods love with threefold heart, 

Being treble in thy divided deity, 

A light for dead men and dark hours, a foot 

Swift on the hills as morning, and a hand 

To all things fierce and fleet that roar and range 

Mortal, with gentler shafts than snow or sleep; 

Hear now and help and lift no violent hand. 

But favorable and fair as thine eye's beam 

Hidden and shown in heaven ; for I all night 

Amid the king's hounds and the hunting men 

Have wrought and worshipped toward thee: nor shall man 

See goodlier hounds or deadlier edge of spears; 

But for the end, that lies unreached at yet 

Between the hands and on the knees of gods. 

O fair-faced sun killing the stars and dews 

And dreams and desolation of the night! 

Rise up, shine, stretch thine hand out, with thy bow 

Touch the most dimmest height of trembling heaven. 

And burn and break the dark about thy ways. 

Shot through and through with arrows; let thine hair 

Lighten as flame above that flameless shell 

Which was the moon, and thine eyes fill the world. 

And thy lips kindle with swift beams; let earth 

Laugh, and the long sea fiery from thy feet 

Through all the roar and ripple of streaming springs 

And foam in reddening flakes and flying flowers 

Shaken from hands and blown from lips of nymphs 

Whose hair or breast divides the wandering wave 

With salt close tresses cleaving lock to lock, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 149 

All gold, or shuddering and unfurrowed snow; 

And all the winds about thee with their wings, 

And fountain-heads of all the watered world; 

Each horn of Achelous, and the green 

Euenus, wedded with the straitening sea. 

For in fair time thou comest; come also thou, 

Twin-born with him, and virgin, Artemis, 

And give our spears their spoil, the wild boar's hide. 

Sent in thine anger against us for sin done 

And bloodless altars without wine or fire. 

Him now consume thou; for thy sacrifice 

With sanguine-shining steam divides the dawn. 

And one, the maiden rose of all thy maids, 

Arcadian Atalanta, snowy-souled. 

Fair as the snow and footed as the wind 

From Ladon and well-wooded Msenalus 

Over the firm hills and the fleeting sea 

Hast thou drawn hither, and many an armed king. 

Heroes, the crown of men, like gods in fight. 

Moreover out of all the ^Etolian land. 

From the full-flowered, Lelantian pasturage 

To what of fruitful field the son of Zeus 

Won from the roaring river and laboring sea 

When the wild god shrank in his horn and fled 

And foamed and lessened through his wrathful fords. 

Leaving clear lands that steamed with sudden sun, 

These virgins with the lightening of the day 

Bring thee fresh wreaths and their own sweeter hair^ 

Luxurious locks and flower-like mixed with flowers. 

Clean offering, and chaste hymns; but me the time 

Divides from these things; whom do thou not less 

Help and give honor, and to mine hounds good speed. 

And edge to spears, and luck to each man's hand. 



150 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



CHORUS 



When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, 
The mother of months in meadow or plain 

Fills the shadows and windy places 

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; 

And the brown bright nightingale amorous 

Is half assuaged for Itylus, 

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, 
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain. 

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, 

Maiden most perfect, lady of light. 
With a noise of winds and many rivers, 

With a clamor of waters, and with might; 
Bind on thy sandals, thou most fleet. 
Over the splendor and speed of thy feet; 
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers. 
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night. 

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her. 
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling? 

O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her, 
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! 

For the stars and the winds are unto her 

As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; 

For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her. 

And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing. 

For winter's rains and ruins are over. 

And all the season of snows and sins; 

The days dividing lover and lover, 

The light that loses, the night that wins; 

And time remembered is grief forgotten, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 151 



And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, 
And in green underwood and cover 

Blossom by blossom the spring begins. 



The full streams feed on flower of rushes, 
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot, 
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes 

From leaf to flower and flower to fruit; 
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, 
And the oat is heard above the lyre. 
And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes 

The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root. 



And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, 

Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, 
Follows with dancing and fills with delight 

The Maenad and the Bassarid; 
And soft as lips that laugh and hide 
The laughing leaves of the trees divide, 
And screen from seeing and leave in sight 
The god pursuing, the maiden hid 



The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair 

Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; 
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare 

Her bright breast shortening into sighs; 
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, 
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves 
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare 
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. 



152 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

CHORUS 
(From "Atalanta in Calydon") 

Before the beginning of years, 

There came to the making of man 
Time, with a gift of tears; 

Grief, with a glass that ran; 
Pleasure, with pain for leaven; 

Summer, with flowers that fell; 
Remembrance fallen from heaven, 

And madness risen from hell; 
Strength without hands to smite; 

Love that endures for a breath; 
Night, the shadow of light. 

And life, the shadow of death. 
And the high gods took in hand 

Fire, and the falling of tears. 
And a measure of sliding sand 

From under the feet of the years; 
And froth and drift of the sea; 

And dust of the laboring earth ; 
And bodies of things to be 

In the houses of death and of birth; 
And wrought with v/eeping and laughter, 

And fashioned with loathing and love, 
With life before and after 

And death beneath and above. 
For a day and a night and a morrow, 

That his strength might endure for a span 
With travail and heavy sorrow, 

The holy spirit of man. 

From the winds of the north and the south 
They gathered as unto strife; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

They breathed upon his mouth, 

They filled his body with life; 
Eyesight and speech they wrought 

For the veils of the soul therein, 
A time for labor and thought, 

A time to serve and to sin; 
They gave him light in his ways, 

And love, and a space for delight, 
And beauty and length of days, 

And night, and sleep in the night. 
His speech is a burning fire; 

With his lips he travaileth ; 
In his heart is a blind desire. 

In his eyes foreknowledge of death; 
He weaves, and is clothed with derision; 

Sows, and he shall not reap; 
His life is a watch or a vision 

Between a sleep and a sleep. 



153 



CHORUS 

(From "Atalanta in Calydon") 

We have seen thee, O Love, thou art fair; thou art goodly, 

O Love; 
Thy wings make light in the air as the wings of a dove. 
Thy feet are as winds that divide the stream of the sea; 
Earth is thy covering to hide thee, the garment of thee. 
Thou art swift and subtle and blind as a flame of fire; 
Before thee the laughter, behind thee the tears of desire; 
And twain go forth beside thee, a man with a maid; 
Her eyes are the eyes of a bride whom delight makes afraid; 
AlS the breath in the buds that stir is her bridal wreath: 
But Fate is the name of her; and his name is Death. 



154 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

For an evil blossom was born 

Of sea-foam and the frothing of blood, 
Blood-red and bitter of fruit, 

And the seed of it laughter and tears, 
And the leaves of it madness and scorn* 
A bitter flower from the bud, 
Sprung of the sea without root. 
Sprung without graft from the years. 



The weft of the world was untorn 

That is woven of the day on the night, 
The hair of the hours was not white 
Nor the raiment of time over-worn, 

When a wonder, a world's delight, 
A perilous goddess was born; 

And the waves of the sea as she came 
Clove, and the foam at her feet, 
Fawning, rejoiced to bring forth 
A freshly blossom, a flame 
Filling the heavens with heat 

To the cold white ends of the north. 
And in the air the clamorous birds. 

And men upon earth that hear 
Sweet articulate words 

Sweetly divided apart. 
And in shallow channel and mere 
The rapid and footless herds, 

Rejoiced, being foolish of heart. 
For all they said upon earth. 

She is fair, she is white like a dove. 
And the life of the world in her breath 
Breathes, and is born at her birth ; 

For they knew thee for mother of love. 
And knew thee not mother of death. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 155 

What hadst thou to do being born, 

Mother, when winds were at ease. 
As a flower of the springtime of corn, 

A flower of the foam of the seas? 
For bitter thou wast from thy birth. 

Aphrodite, a mother of strife; 
For before thee some rest was on earth, 
A little respite from tears, 

A little pleasure of life; 
For life was not then as thou art. 

But as one that waxeth in years 

Sweet-spoken, a fruitful wife; 
Earth had no thorn, and desire 
No sting, neither death any dart; 

What hadst thou to do among these. 
Thou, clothed with a burning fire. 
Thou, girt with sorrow of heart. 

Thou, sprung of the seed of the seas 
As an ear from a seed of com. 

As a brand plucked forth of a pyre, 
As a ray shed forth of the morn. 

For division of soul and disease. 
For a dart and a sting and a thorn? 
What ailed thee then to be born? 
Was there not evil enough, 

Mother, and anguish on earth 

Born with a man at his birth. 
Wastes underfoot, and above 

Storm out of heaven, and dearth 
Shaken down from the shining thereof 
Wrecks from afar overseas 

And perils of shallow and firth. 
And tears that spring and increase 

In the barren places of mirth, 
That thou, having wings as a dove. 

Being girt with desire for a girth. 



156 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

That thou must come after these. 
That thou must lay on him love? 

Thou shouldst not so have been born: 
But death should have risen with thee, 
Mother, and visible fear, 

Grief, and the wringing of hands, 
And noise of many that mourn; 
The smitten bosom, the knee 
Bowed, and in each man's ear 
A cry as of perishing lands, 
A moan as of people in prison, 
A tumult of infinite griefs; 

And thunder of storm on the sands, 
And wailing of wives on the shore; 
And under thee newly arisen, 

Loud shoals and shipwrecking reefs, 
Fierce air and violent light: 
Sail rent and sundering oar, 
Darkness and noises of night; 
Clashing of streams in the sea. 
Wave against wave as a sword. 
Clamor of currents, and foam; 
Rains making ruin on earth. 
Winds that wax ravenous and roam 
As wolves in a wolfish horde; 
Fruits growing faint in the tree, 

And bhnd things dead in their birth; 
Famine, and blighting of corn. 
When thy time was come to be born. 

All these we know of; but thee 
Who shall discern or declare? 

In the uttermost ends of the sea 
The light of thine eyelids and hair, 
The light of thy bosom as fire 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Between the wheel of the sun 
And the flying flames of the air? 

Wilt thou turn thee not yet nor have pity, 
But abide with despair and desire 
And the crying of armies undone, 

Lamentation of one with another, 
And breaking of city by city; 
The dividing of friend against friend, 

The severing of brother and brother; 
Wilt thou utterly bring to an end? 
Have mercy, mother! 

For against all men from of old 
Thou hast set thine hand as a curse. 
And cast out gods from their places. 
These things are spoken of thee. 
Strong kings and goodly with gold 

Thou hast found out arrows to pierce, 
And made their kingdoms and races 
As dust and surf of the sea. 
All these, overburdened with woes 

And with length of their days waxen weak, 
Thou slewest; and sentest moreover 
Upon Tyro an evil thing. 
Rent hair and a fetter and blows 

Making bloody the flower of the cheek, 
Though she lay by a god as a lover, 
Though fair, and the seed of a king. 
For of old, being full of thy fire. 
She endured not longer to wear 
On her bosom a saffron vest, 

On her shoulder an ash wood quiver; 
Being mixed and made one through desire. 
With Enipeus and all her hair 

Made moist with his mouth, and her breast 
Filled full of the foam of the river. 



157 



158 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

CHORUS 

(From "Erechtheus") 

Out of the north wind grief came forth, 
And the shining of a sword out of the sea. 

Yea, of old the first-blown blast blew the prelude of this last. 
The blast of his trumpet upon Rhodope. 

Out of the north skies full of his cloud. 

With the clamor of his storms as of a crowd 

At the wheels of a great king crying aloud, 

At the axle of a strong king's car 

That has girded on the girdle of war — 

With hands that lightened the skies in sunder 

And feet whose fall was followed of thunder, 
A God, a great God strange of name, 
With horse-yoke fleeter-hoofed than flame, 

To the mountain bed of a maiden came, 

Oreithyia, the bride mismated, 

Wofully wed in a snow-strewn bed 

With a bridegroom that kisses the bride's mouth dead; 

Without garland, without glory, without song, 

As a fawn by night on the hills belated. 

Given over for a spoil unto the strong. 
From lips how pale so keen a wail 
At the grasp of a God's hand on her she gave. 

When his breath that darkens air made a havoc of her hair^ 
It rang from the mountain even to the wave; 

Rang with a cry. Woe's me, woe is me! 

From the darkness upon Haemus to the sea: 

And with hands that clung to her new lord's knee, 

As a virgin overborne with shame, 

She besought him by her spouseless fame. 

By the blameless breasts of a maid unmarried, 

And locks unmaidenly rent and harried. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



159 



And all her flower of body, bom 
To match the maidenhood of morn, 
With the might of the wind's wrath wTenched and torn. 
Vain, all vain as a dead man's vision, 
Falling by night in his old friends' sight, 
To be scattered with slumber and slain ere light; 
5uch a breath of such a bridegroom in that hour 
Of her prayers made mock, of her fears derision, 

And a ravage of her youth as of a flower. 
V^ith a leap of his limbs as a lion's, a cry from his lips as of 
thunder. 
In a storm of amorous godhead filled with fire, 
From the height of the heaven that was rent with the roar of 
his coming in sunder. 
Sprang the strong God on the spoil of his desire. 
And the pines of the hills were as green reeds shattered, 
And their branches as buds of the soft spring scattered, 
And the west wind and east, and the sound of the south, 
Fell dumb at the blast of the north wind's mouth. 
At the cry of his coming out of heaven. 
And the wild beasts quailed in the rifts and hollows 
Where hound nor clarion of huntsman follows, 
And the depths of the sea were aghast, and whitened. 
And the crowns of their waves were as flame that lightened, 
And the heart of the floods thereof was riven. 
But she knew not him coming for terror, she felt not her 
wrong that he wrought her, 
When her locks as leaves were shed before his breath, 
And she heard not for terror his prayer, though the cry was 
a God's that besought her, 
Blown from lips that strew the world-wide seas with death 
For the heart was molten within her to hear, 
And her knees beneath her were loosened for fear, 
And her blood fast bound as a frost-bound water, 
And the soft new bloom of the green earth's daughter. 
Wind-wasted as blossom of a tree ; 



i6o SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

As the wild God rapt her from earth's breast lifted, 
On the strength of the stream of his dark breath drifted, 
From the bosom of earth as a bride from the mother, 
With storm for bridesman and wreck for brother, 
As a cloud that he sheds upon the sea. 

Of this hoary-headed woe 

Song made memory long ago; 

Now a younger grief to mourn 

Needs a new song younger born. 

Who shall teach our tongues to reach 

What strange height of saddest speech, 
For the new bride's sake that is given to be 
A stay to fetter the foot of the sea, 
Lest it quite spurn down and trample the town, 
Ere the violets be dead that were plucked for its crown. 

Or its olive-leaf whiten and wither? 

Who shall say of the wind's way 

That he journed yesterday, 
Or the track of the storm that shall sound to-morrow, 
If the new be more than the grey-grown sorrow? 

For the wind of the green first season was keen, 

And the blast shall be sharper that blew between 
That the breath of the sea blows hither. 



THE INTERPRETERS 



Bays dawn on us that make amends for many 

Sometimes, 
When heaven and earth seem sweeter even than any 

Man's rhymes. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS i6i 

Light had not all been quenched in France, or quelled 

In Greece, 
Had Homer sung not, or had Hugo held 

His peace. 

Had Sappho's self not left her word thus long 

For token. 
The sea round Lesbos yet in waves of song 

Had spoken. 



n 

And yet these days of subtler air and finer 

Delight, 
When lovelier looks the darkness, and diviner 

The light— 

The gift they give of all these golden hours, 

Whose urn 
Pours forth reverberate rays or shadowing showers 

In turn — 

Clouds, beams, and winds that make the live day's track 

Seem living — 
What were they did no spirit give them back 

Thanksgiving? 



in 



Dead air, dead fire, dead shapes and shadows, telling 

Time nought; 
Man gives them sense and soul by song, and dwelling 
In thought. 



i62 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

In human thought their being endures, their power 

Abides: 
Else were their life a thing that each light hour 

Derides. 

The years live, work, sigh, smile, and die, with all 

They cherish; 
The soul endures, though dreams that fed it fall 

And perish. 



IV 



In human thought have all things habitation; 

Our days 
Laugh, lower, and lighten past, and find no station 

That stays. 

But thought and faith are mightier things than time 

Can wrong. 
Made splendid once with speech, or made sublime 

By song. 

Remembrance, though the tide of change that rolls 

Wax hoary. 
Gives earth and heaven, for song's sake and the soul's, 

Their glory. 



THE WINDS 
O WEARY fa' the east wind, 



And weary fa' the west: 
And gin I were under the wan waves wide 
I wot weel wad I rest. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 163 

O weary fa' the north wind, 

And weary fa' the south: 
The sea went ower my good lord's head 

Or ever he kissed my mouth. 

Weary fa' the windward rocks, 

And weary fa' the lee: 
They might hae sunken sevenscore ships, 

And let my love's gang free. 

And weary fa' ye, mariners a'. 

And weary fa' the sea: 
It might hae taken an hundred men. 

And let my ae love be. 



A LYKE-WAKE SONG 

Fair face, full of pride. 

Sit ye dowTi by a dead man's side. 

Ye sang songs a' the day: 

Sit down at night in the red worm's wayo 

Proud ye were a' day long: 
Ye'll be but lean at evensong. 

Ye had gowd kells on your hair: 
Nae man kens what ye were. 

Ye set scorn by the silken stuff: 
Now the grave is clean enough. 

Ye set scorn by the rubis ring: 
Now the worm is a saft sweet thing. 



i64 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Fine gold and blithe fair face, 
Ye are come to a grimly place. 

Gold hair and glad grey een, 
Nae man kens if ye have been. 



A WATCH IN THE NIGHT 



Watchman, what of the night? — • 

Storm and thunder and rain, 

Lights that waver and wane, 
Leaving the watchfires unlit. 
Only the balefires are bright. 

And the flash of the lamps now and then 
From a palace where spoilers sit, 

Trampling the children of men. 



Prophet, what of the night? — 
I stand by the verge of the sea, 
Banished, uncomforted, free, 

Hearing the noise of the waves 

And sudden flashes that smite 
Some man's tyrannous head, 

Thundering, heard among graves 
That hide the hosts of his dead. 



Mourners, what of the night? — 
All night through without sleep 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 165 

We weep, and we weep, and we weep. 
Who shall give us our sons? 
Beaks of raven and kite. 

Mouths of wolf and of hound. 
Give us them back whom the guns 

Shot for your dead on the ground. 



Dead men, what of the night? — 
Cannon and scaffold and sword. 
Horror of gibbet and cord. 
Mowed us as sheaves for the grave, 
Mowed us down for the right. 
We do not grudge or repent. 
Freely to freedom we gave 
Pledges, till life should be spent. 



Statesman, what of the night? — 

The night will last me my time. 

The gold on a crown or a crime 
Looks well enough yet by the lamps. 
Have we not fingers to write. 

Lips to swear at a need? 
Then, when danger decamps. 

Bury the word with the deed. 



Warrior, what o'f the night? — 
Whether it be not or be 
Night, is as one thing to me. 

I for one, at the least, 

Ask not of dews if they blight, 



i66 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Ask not of flames if they slay, 
Ask not of prince or of priest 
How long ere we put them away 



Master, what of the night? — 

Child, night is not at all 

Anywhere, fallen or to fall. 
Save in our star-stricken eyes. 
Forth of our eyes it takes flight, 

Look we but once nor before 
Nor behind us, but straight on the skies 

Night is not then any more. 



8 



Exile, what of the night? — 

The tides and the hours run out. 
The seasons of death and of doubt, 

The night-watches bitter and sore. 

In the quicksands leftward and right 
My feet sink down under me; 

But I know the scents of the shore 

And the broad blown breaths of the sea. 



Captives, w^hat of the night?— 

It rains outside overhead 

Always, a rain that is red. 
And our faces are soiled with the rain. 
Here in the seasons' despite 

Day-time and night-time are one, 
Till the curse of the kings and the chain 

Break, and their toils be undone. 



SIVINBURNE'S POEMS 167 



10 



Christian, what of the night? — 

I cannot tell; I am blind. 

I halt and hearken behind 
If haply the hours will go back 
And return to the dear dead light, 

To the watchfires and stars that of old 
Shone where the sky now is black, 

Glowed where the earth now is cold. 



II 



High priest, what of the night? — 
The night is horrible here 
With haggard faces and fear. 

Blood, and the burning of fire. 

Mine eyes are emptied of sight. 
Mine hands are full of the dust, 

If the God of my faith be a liar, 
Who is it that I shall trust? 



12 



Princes, what of the night? — 
Night with pestilent breath 
Feeds us, children of death 

Clothes us close with her gloom. 

Rapine and famine and fright 
Crouch at our feet and are fed. 

Earth where we pass is a tomb. 
Life where we triumph is dead. 



1 68 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



13 



Martyrs, what of the night? — 

Nay, is it night with you yet? 

We, for our part, we forget 
What night was, if it were. 
The loud red mouth of the fight 

Are silent and shut where we are. 
In our eyes the tempestuous air 

Shines as the face of a star. 



14 



England, what of the night? — 

Night is for slumber and sleep, 

Warm, no season to weep. 
Let me alone till the day. 
Sleep would I still if I might, 

Who have slept for two hundred years. 
Once I had honor,' they say; 

But slumber is sweeter than tears. 



15 



France, what of the night? — 
Night is the prostitute's noon. 
Kissed and drugged till she swoon, 

Spat upon, trod upon, whored. 

With bloodred rose-garlands dight, 
Round me reels in the dance 

Death, my saviour, my lord. 

Crowned; there is no more France. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 169 



16 



Italy, what of the night? — 

Ah, child, child, it is long! 

Moonbeam and starbeam and song 
Leave it dumb now and dark. 
Yet I perceive on the height 

Eastward, not now very far, 
A song too loud for the lark, 

A light too strong for a star. 



17 



Germany, what of the night? — 

Long has it lulled me with dreams; 

Now at midwatch, as it seems. 
Light is brought back to mine eyes, 
And the mastery of old and the might 

Lives in the joints of mine hands. 
Steadies my limbs as they rise, 

Strengthens my foot as it stands. 



18 



Europe, what of the night? — 
Ask of heaven, and the sea 
And my babes on the bosom of me. 

Nations of mine, but ungrown. 

There is one who shall surely requite 
All that endure or that err: 

She can answer alone: 

Ask not of me, but of her. 



1 70 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 
19 

Liberty, what of the night? — 
I feel not the red rains fall, 
Hear not the tempest at all, 

Nor thunder in heaven any more. 

All the distance is white 

With the soundless feet of the sun. 

Night, with the woes that it wore, 
Night is over and done. 



HERTHA 



I AM that which began; 

Out of me the years roll; 
Out of me God and man; 
I am equal and Whole; 
God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am 
the soul. 

Before ever land was, 
Before ever the sea. 
Or soft hair of the grass, 
Or fair limbs of the tree, 
Or the flesh-colored fruit of my branches, I was, and thy 
soul was in me. 

First life on my sources 

First drifted and swam; 
Out of me are the forces 
That save it or damn; 
Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird; before 
God w^as, I am. 

Beside or above me 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



^71 



Nought is there to go; 
Love or unlove me, 
Unknow me or know, 
I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and 
I am the blow. 

I the mark that is missed 

And the arrows that miss, 
I the mouth that is kissed 
And the breath in the kiss. 
The search, and the sought, and the seeker, the soul and the 
body that is. 

I am the thing which blesses 

My spirit elate; 
That which caresses 
With hands uncreate 
My limbs unbegotten that measure the length of the measure 
of fate. 

But what thing dost thou now. 

Looking Godward, to cry 
"I am I, thou art thou, 
I am low, thou art high?" 
i am thou, whom thou seekest to find him; find thou but 
myself, thou art I. 

I the grain and the furrow, 

The plough-cloven clod 
And the ploughshare drawn thorough, 
The germ and the sod. 
The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower, the dust 
which is God. 

Hast thou known how I fashioned thee, 
Child, underground? 



172 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Fire that impassioned thee, 
Iron that bound, 
Dim changes of water, what thing of all these hast thou 
known of or found? 

Canst thou say in thine heart 

Thou has seen with thine eyes 
With what cunning of art 

Thou wast wrought in what wise, 
By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown 
on my breast to the skies? 

Who hath given, who hath sold it thee. 

Knowledge of me? 
Hath the wilderness told it thee? 
Hast thou learnt of the sea? 
Hast thou communed in spirit with night? have the winds 
taken counsel with thee? 

Have I set such a star 

To show light on thy brow 
That thou sawest from afar 
What I show to thee now? 
Have ye spoken as brethren together, the sun and the moun- 
tains and thou? 

What is here, dost thou know it? 

What was, hast thou known? 
Prophet nor poet 

Nor tripod nor throne 
Nor spirit nor flesh can make answer, but only thy mother 
alone. 

Mother, not maker. 

Born, and not made; 
^^^^'^f?h her children forsake her, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



173 



Allured or afraid, 
Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, she stirs not for 
all that have prayed. 

A creed is a rod, 

And a crown is of night; 
But this thing is God, 
To be man with thy might, 
To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out 
thy life as the light. 

I am in thee to save thee. 
As my soul in thee saith. 
Give thou as I gave thee, 
Thy life-blood and breath. 
Green leaves of thy labor, white flowers of thy thought, and 
red fruit of thy death. 

Be the ways of thy giving 

As mine were to thee; 
The free life of thy living, 
Be the gift of it free; 
Mot as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give 
thee to me. 

children of banishment. 
Souls overcast. 

Were the lights ye see vanish meant 
Alway to last, 
Ye would know not the sun overshining the shadows and 
stars overpast. 

1 that saw where ye trod 
The dim paths of the night 

Set the shadow called God 
In your skies to give light; 
But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless 
soul is in sight. 



174 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

The tree many-rooted 

That swells to the sky 
With frondage red-fruited, 
The life-tree am I; 
In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall 
live and not die. 



But the Gods of your fashion 

That take and that give, 
In their pity and passion 
That scourge and forgive, 
They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off: they 
shall die and not live. 



My own blood is what stanches 

The wounds in my bark: 
Stars caught in my branches 
Make day of the dark, 
And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out 
their fires as a spark. 

Where dead ages hide under 

The live roots of the tree, 
In my darkness the thunder 
Make utterance of me; 
In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves 
sound of the sea. 



That noise is of Time, 

As his feathers are spread 
And his feet set to climb 

Through the boughs overhead, 
And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are 
bent with his tread. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



175 



The storm-winds of ages 

Blow through me and cease, 
The war- wind that rages, 
The spring-wind of peace, 
Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my 
blossoms increase. 

All sounds of all changes, 
All shadows and lights 
On the world's mountain-ranges 
And stream-riven heights. 
Whose tongue is the wind's tongue and language of storm- 
clouds on earth-shaking nights; 

All forms of all faces, 

All works of all hands 
In unsearchable places 
Of time-stricken lands. 
All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop 
through me as sands. 

Though sore be my burden 
And more than ye know, 
And my growth have no guerdon 
But only to grow, 
Yei I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or death- 
worms below. 



These too have their part in me, 

As I too in these; 
Such fire is at heart in me, 
Such sap is this tree's, 
iVhich hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands 
and of seas. 



1 76 SWINB URNE'S POEMS 

In the spring-colored hours 

When my mind was as May's, 
There brake forth of me flowers 
By centuries of days, 
Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from 
my spirit as rays. 

And the sound of them springing 

And smell of their shoots 
Were as warmth and sweet singing 
And strength to my roots; 
And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of 
soul were my fruits. 

I bid you but be; 

I have need not of prayer; 
I have need of you free 

As your mouths of mine air; 
That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the 
fruits of me fair. 

More fair than strange fruit is 

Of faiths ye espouse; 
In me only the root is 

That blooms in your boughs; 
Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with 
faith of your vows. 

In the darkening and whitening 

Abysses adored, 
With dayspring and lightning 
For lamp and for sword, 
God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the 
wrath of the Lord. 

O my sons, O too dutiful 
Toward Gods not of me, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



177 



Was not I enough beautiful? 
Was it hard to be free? 
For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth 
now and see. 

Lo, winged with world's wonders, 

With miracles shod, 
With the fires of his thunders 
For raiment and rod, 
God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the 
terror of God. 



For his twilight is come on him, 

His anguish is here; 
And his spirits gaze dumb on him, 
Grown grey from his fear; 
And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his 
infinite year. 

Thought made him and breaks him, 

Truth slays and forgives; 
But to you, as time takes him. 
This new thing it gives, 
Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom 
and lives. 

For truth only is living. 
Truth only is whole, 
And the love of his giving 
Man's polestar and pole; 
Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of 
my soul. 

One birth of my bosom ; 
One beam of mine eye: 



178 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

One topmost blossom 
That scales the sky; 
Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man 
that is I. 



MATER DOLOROSA 

Citoyen, lui dit Enjolras, ma mere, c'est la Republique. 
—Les Miserables, 

Who is this that sits by the way, by the wild wayside. 
In a rent stained raiment, the robe of a cast-off bride, 
In the dust, in the rainfall sitting, with soiled feet bare, 
With the night for a garment upon her, with torn wet hair? 
She is fairer of face than the daughters of men, and her 

eyes. 
Worn through with her tears, are deep as the depth of skies. 

This is she for whose sake being fallen, for whose abject sake, 
Earth groans in the blackness of darkness, and men's hearts 

break 
This is she for whose love, having seen her, the men that 

were 
Poured life out as water, and shed their souls upon air, 
This is she for whose glory their years were counted as foam ; 
Whose face was a light upon Greece, was a fire upon Rome. 

Is it now not surely a vain thing, a foolish and vain. 

To sit down by her, mourn to her, serve her, partake in the 

pain? 
She is grey with the dust of time on his manifold ways, 
Where her faint feet stumble and falter through year-long 

days 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



179 



Shall she help us at all, O fools, give fruit or give fame, 
Who herself is a name despised, a rejected name? 

We have not served her for guerdon. If any do so, 

That his mouth may be sweet with such honey, we care not 

to know 
We have drunk from a wine-unsweetened, a perilous cup, 
A draught very bitter. The kings of the earth stood up. 
And the rulers took counsel together to smite her and slay; 
And the blood of her wounds is given us to drink to-day. 

Can these bones live? or the leaves that are dead leaves 

bud? 
Or the dead blood drawn from her veins be in your veins 

blood? 
Will ye gather up water again that was drawn and shed? 
In the blood is the life of the veins, and her veins are dead 
For the lives that are over are over, and past things past; 
She had her day, and is not; was first, and is last. 

Is it nothing unto you then, all ye that pass by 

If her breath be left in her lips if she live now or die? 

Behold now, O people, and say if she be not fair 

Whom your fathers followed to find her with praise and 

prayer, 
And rejoiced having found her, though roof they had none 

nor bread; 
But ye care not; what is it to you if her own day be dead? 

It was well with our fathers; their sound was in all men's 

heads; 
There was fire in their hearts, and the hunger of fight in their 

hands. 
Naked and strong they went forth on her strength like 

flame, 



i8o SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

For her loves and her name's sake of old, her republican 

name. 
But their children by kings made quiet, by priests made 

wise, 
Love better the heat of their hearths than the light of her 

eyes. 

Are they children of these thy children indeed who have 

sold 
O golden goddess the light of thy face for gold? 
Are they sons indeed the sons of thy dayspring of hope, 
Whose lives are in fief of an emperor, whose souls of a Pope? 
Hide then thine head, O beloved; thy time is done; 
Thy kingdom is broken in heaven, and blind thy sun. 

What sleep is upon you, to dream she indeed shsdl rise. 
When the hopes are dead in her heart as the tears in her 

eyes? 
If ye sing of her dead will she stir? if ye weep for her, 

weep? 
Come away now, leave her; what hath she to do but sleep? 
But ye that mourn are alive, and have years to be; 
And life is good, and the world is wiser than we. 

Yea, wise is the world and mighty, with years to give, 
And years to promise; but how long now shall it live? 
And foolish and poor is faith, and her ways are bare. 
Till she find the way of the sun, and the morning air, 
In that hour shall this dead face shine as the face of the 

sun. 
And the soul of man and her soul and the world's be one. 



SWINBURNE'S P'OEMS i8l 



A FORSAKEN GARDEN 

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, 
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, 

Walled round with rocks as an inland island, 
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. 

A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses 

The steep square slope of the blossomless bed 

Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses 
Now lie dead. 

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, 

To the low last edge of the long lone land. 
If a step should sound or a word be spoken. 

Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? 
So long have the gray bare walks lain guestless. 

Through branches and briers if a man make way. 
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless 
Night and day. 

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled 

That crawls by a track none turn to climb 
To ttie strait waste place that the years have rifled 

Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time. 
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; 

The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. 
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, 
These remain. 

Not a flower to be prest of the foot that falls not; 

As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; 
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,: 

Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. 



i82 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Over the meadows that blossom and wither 

Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; 
Only the sun and the rain come hither 
All year long. 

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels 
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. 

Only the wind here hovers and revels 

In a round where life seems barren as death. 

Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, 

Haply, of lovers none ever will know. 

Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping 
Years ago. 

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither," 
Did he whisper! "Look forth from the flowers to the 
sea; 
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither, 

And men that love lightly may die — but we?" 
And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, 

And or ever the garden's last petals were shed, 
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened. 
Love was dead. 

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? 

And were one to the end — but what end who knows? 
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither. 

As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. 
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? 

What love was ever as deep as a grave? 
They are loveless now as the grass above them 
Or the wave. 

All are at one now, roses and lovers. 

Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. 
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 183 

In the air now soft with a summer to be. 
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter 

Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, 
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter, 
We shall sleep. 

Here death may deal not again forever; 

Here change may come not till all change end. 
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, 

Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. 
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing. 

While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; 
Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing 
Roll the sea. 

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, 
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, 

Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble 
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink. 

Here now in his triumph where all things falter, 
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, 

As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, 
Death lies dead. 



RELICS 



This flower that smells of honey and the sea, 
White laurustine, seems in my hand to be 
A white star made of memory long ago 
Lit in the heaven of dear times dead to me. 

A star out of the skies love used to know, 
Here held in hand, a stray left yet to show 

What flowers my heart was full of in the days 
That are long since gone down dead memory's flow. 



i84 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Dead memory that revives on doubtful ways, 
Half hearkening what the buried season says 

Out of the world of the unapparent dead 
Where the lost Aprils are, and the lost Mays. 



Flower, once I knew thy star-white brethren bred 
Nigh where the last of all the land made head 

Against the sea, a keen-faced promontory. 
Flowers on salt wind and sprinkled sea-dews fed. 

Their hearts were glad of the free place's glory; 
The wind that sang them all his stormy story 

Had talked all winter to the sleepless spray. 
And as the sea's their hues were hard and hoary. 

Like things born of the sea and the bright day. 
They laughed out at the years that could not slay, 

Live sons and joyous of unquiet hours. 
And stronger than all storms that range for prey. 

And in the close indomitable flowers 
A keen-edged odor of the sun and showers 
Was as the smell of the fresh honeycomb 
Made sweet for mouths of none but paramours. 

Out of the hard green wall of leaves that clomb 
They showed like windfalls of the snow-soft foam, 

Or feathers from the weary south-wind's wing, 
Fair as the spray that it came shoreward from. 

And thou, as white, what word hast thou to bring? 
If my heart hearken, whereof wilt thou sing? 

For some sign surely thou too hast to bear, 
Some word far south was taught thee of the spring. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 185 

White like a white rose, not like these that were 
Taught of the wind's mouth and the winter air, 

Poor tender thing of soft Italian bloom. 
Where once thou grewest, what else for me grew there? 

Born in what spring and on what city's tomb, 

By whose hand wast thou reached, and plucked for whom? 

There hangs about thee, could the soul's sense tell, 
An odor as of love and of love's doom. 

Of days more sweet than thou wast sweet to smell. 
Of flower-soft thoughts that came to flower and fell, 

Of loves that lived a lily's life and died. 
Of dreams now dwelling where dead roses dwell. 

white birth of the golden mountain-side 
That for the sun's love makes its bosom wide 
At sunrise, and with all its woods and flowers 
Takes in the morning to its heart of pride! 

Thou hast a word of that one land of ours. 
And of the fair town called of the fair towers. 

A word for me of my San Gimignan, 
A word of April's greenest-girdled hours. 

Of the breached walls whereon the wall-flowers ran 
Called of Saint Fina, breachless now of man. 

Though time with soft feet break them stone by stone, 
Who breaks down hour by hour his own reign's span. 

Of the cliff overcome and overgrown 

That all that flowerage clothed as flesh clothes bone, 

That garment of acacias made for May, 
Whereof here lies one witness overblown. 



i86 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

The fair brave trees with all their flowers at play, 
How king-like they stood up into the day! 

How sweet the day was with them, and the night! 
Such words of message have dead flowers to say. 

This that the winter and the wind made bright, 
And this that lived upon Italian light. 

Before I throw them and these words away. 
Who knows but I what memories too take flight? 



EPICEDE 
(James Lorimer Graham died at Florence. April 30, 1876.) 

Life may give for love to death 
Little; what are life's gifts worth 
To the dead wrapt round with earth? 

Yet from lips of living breath 

Sighs or words we are fain to give, 
All that yet, while yet we live. 

Life may give for love to death. 

Dead so long before his day. 

Passed out of the Italian sun 

To the dark where all is done 
Fallen upon the verge of May; 

Here at life's and April's end 

How should song salute my friend 
Dead so long before his day? 

Not a kindlier life or sweeter 

Time, that lights and quenches men, 
Now may quench or light again, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 187 

Mingling with the mystic metre 
Woven of all men's lives with his 
Not a clearer note than this, 

Not a kindlier life or sweeter. 



In this heavenliest part of earth 
He that living loved the light, 
Light and song, may rest aright, 

One in death, if strange in birth, 
With the deathless dead that make 
Life the lovelier for their sake 

In this heavenliest part of earth. 

Light, and song, and sleep at last — -^ 
Struggling hands and suppliant knees 
Get no goodlier gift than these. 

Song that holds remembrance fast, 
Light that lightens death, attend 
Round their graves who have to friend 

Light, and song, and sleep at last. 



A VISION OF SPRING IN WINTER 



O TENDER time that love thinks long to see, 
Sweet foot of spring that with her footfall sows 
Late snowlike flowery leavings of the snows, 

Be not too long irresolute to be; 

mother-month, where have they hidden thee? 
Out of the pale time of the flowerless rose 

1 reach my heart out toward the springtime lands. 

I stretch my spirit forth to the fair hours. 
The purplest of the prime; 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

I lean my soul down over them, with hands 

Made wide to take the ghostly growths of flowers; 
I send my love back to the lonely time. 



11 



Where has the greenwood hid thy gracious head? 

Veiled with what visions while the gray world grieves 

Or muffled with what shadows of green leaves, 
What warm intangible green shadows spread 
To sweeten the sweet twilight for thy bed? 

What sleep enchants thee? what delight deceives? 
Where the deep dreamlike dew before the dawn 

Feels not the fingers of the sunlight yet 
Its silver web unweave, 
Thy footless ghost on some unfooted lawn 

Whose air the unrisen sunbeams fear to fret 

Lives a ghost's life of daylong dawn and eve. 



Ill 



Sunrise it sees not, neither set of star, 
Large nightfall, nor imperial plenilune, 
Nor strong sweet shape of the full-breasted noon; 

But where the silver- sandalled shadows are, 

Too soft for arrows of the sun to mar, 

Moves with the mild gait of an ungrown njoon: 

Hard overhead the half-lit crescent swims. 
The tender-colored night draws hardly breath. 
The light is listening; 

They watch the dawn of slender-shapen limbs, 
Virginal, born again of doubtful death. 

Chill foster-father of the weanling spring. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 189 



IV 



As sweet desire of day before the day, 
As dreams of love before the true love bom 
From the outer edge of winter overworn 
The ghost arisen of May before the May 
Takes through dim air her unawakened way, 

The gracious ghost of morning risen ere morn: 
With little unblown breasts and child-eyed looks 
Following, the very maid, the girl-child spring, 
Lifts windward her bright brows, 
Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks, 
And kindles with her own mouth's coloring 

The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs. 



I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see. 

Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath 
Shall put at last the deadly days to death 
And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee 
And seaward hollows where my feet would be 

When heaven shall hear the word that April saith 
To change the cold heart of the weary time, 
To stir and soften all the time to tears. 
Tears joyfuUer than mirth; 
As even to May's clear height the young days climb 
With feet not swifter than those fair first years 
Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on 
earth. 



VI 



I would not bid thee, though I might, give back 
One good thing youth has given and borne away; 



190 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

I crave not any comfort of the day 
That is not, nor on time's retrodden track 
Would turn to meet the white-robed hours or black 

That long since left me on their mortal way; 
Nor light nor love that has been, nor the breath 

That comes with the morning from the sun to be 
And sets light hope on fire; 
No fruit, no flower thought once too fair for death, 

No flower nor hour once fallen from lifers green tree. 
No leaf once plucked or once fulfilled desire. 



VII 



The morning song beneath the stars that fled 
With twilight through the moonless mountain air, 
While youth with burning lips and wreathless hair 

Sang toward the sun that was to crown his head. 

Rising; the hopes that triumphed and fell dead. 
The sweet swift eyes and songs of hours that were; 

These may'st thou not give back forever; these. 
As at the sea's heart all her wrecks lie waste, 
Lie deeper than the sea; 

But flowers thou may'st, and winds, and hours of ease, 
And all its April to the world thou may'st 
Give back, and half my April back to me. 



BEFORE SUNSET 

In the lower lands of day 
On the hither side of night. 

There is nothing that will stay. 
There are all things soft to sight; 
Lighted shade and shadowy light 

In the wayside and the way, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Hours the sun has spared to smite, 
Flowers the rain has left to play. 

Shall these hours run down and say 

No good thing of thee and me? 
Time that made us and will slay 

Laughs at love in me and thee; 

But if here the flowers may see 
One whole hour of amorous breath, 

Time shall die, and love shall be 
Lord as time was over death. 



191 



SONG 

Love laid his sleepless head 
On a thorny rosy bed; 
And his eyes with tears were red. 
And pale his lips as the dead. 

And fear and sorrow and scorn 
Kept watch by his head forlorn. 
Till the night was overworn 
And the world was merry with mom. 

And Joy came up with the day 
And kissed Love's lips as he lay. 
And the watchers ghostly and gray 
Sped from his pillow away. 

And his eyes as the dawn grew bright, 
And his lips waxed ruddy as light: 
Sorrow may reign for a night, 
But day shall bring back delight. 



192 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

A BALLAD OF FRANCOIS VILLON, 

PRINCE OF ALL BALLAD-MAKERS. 

BIRD of the bitter bright gray golden mom 
Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years, 

First of us all and sweetest singer born 

Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears 
Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears; 

When song new-born put off the old world's attire 

And felt its tune on her changed lips expire, 
Writ foremost on the roll of them that came 

Fresh girt for service of the latter lyre, 
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name! 

Alas the joy, the sorrow and the scorn, 

That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears. 
And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn 

And plume-plucked jail-birds for thy starveling peers 

Till death dipt close their flight with shameful shears ; 
Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire. 
When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire 

Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame 
Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, 

Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name. 

Poor splendid wings so frayed and soiled and torn! 

Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears! 
Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn. 

That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers 

Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells in our ears! 
What far delight has cooled the fierce desire 
That like some ravenous bird was strong to tire 

On that frail flesh and soul consumed with flame, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 193 

But left more sweet than roses to respire, 
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name. 



ENVOI 

Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire, 
A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire; 

Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame. 
But from thy feet now death has washed the mire, 
Love reads our first at head of all our quire, 

Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name. 



BY THE NORTH SEA. 



A LAND that is lonelier than ruin; 

A sea that is stranger than death : 
Far fields that a rose never blew in. 

Wan waste where the winds lack breath; 
Waste endless and boundless and flowerless 

But of marsh-blossoms fruitless as free: 
Where earth lies exhausted, as powerless 
To strive with the sea. 



Far flickers the flight of the swallows, 

Far flutters the weft of the grass 
Spun dense over desolate hollows 

More pale than the clouds as they pass: 
Thick woven as the weft of a witch is 

Round the heart of a thrall that hath sinned. 
Whose youth and the wrecks of its riches 
Are waifs on the wind. 



194 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



The pastures are herdless and sheepless 

No pasture or shelter for herds: 
The wind is relentless and sleepless 

And restless and songless the birds; 
Their cries from afar fall breathless, 

Their wings are as lightnings that flee; 
For the land has two lords that are deathless: 
Death's self, and the sea. 



These twain, as a king with his fellow, 
Hold converse of desolate speech: 

And her waters are haggard and yellow 
And crass with the scurf of the beach: 

And his garments are grey as the hoary 
Wan sky where the day lies dim: 

And his power is to her, and his glory, 
As hers unto him. 



In the pride of his power she rejoices, 
In her glory he glows and is glad: 

In her darkness the sound of his voice is. 
With his breath she dilates and is mad: 

"If thou slay me, O death, and outlive me. 
Yet thy love hath fulfilled me of thee." 

"Shall I give thee not back if thou give me, 
O sister, O sea?" 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 195 



And year upon year dawns living, 
And age upon age drops dead: 

And his hand is not weary of giving, 
And the thirst of her heart is not fed: 

And the hunger that moans in her passion, 
And the rage in her hunger that roars. 

As a wolf's that the winter lays lash on, 
Still calls and implores. 



7 



Her walls have no granite for girder, 
No fortalice fronting her stands: 

But reefs the bloodguiltiest of murder 
Are less than the banks of her sands: 

These number their slain by the thousand; 
For the ship hath no surety to be, 

When the bank is abreast of her bows and 
Aflush with the sea. 



8 



No surety to stand, and no shelter 
To dawn out of darkness but one. 

Out of waters that hurtle and welter 
No succor to dawn with the sun 

But a rest from the wind as it passes. 
Where, hardly redeemed from the waves, 

Lie thick as the blades of the grasses 
The dead in their graves. 



196 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



A multitude noteless of numbers, 
As wild weeds cast on an heap: 

And sounder than sleep are their slumbers, 
And softer than song is their sleep; 

And sweeter than all things and stranger 
The sense, if perchance it may be, 

That the wind is divested of danger 
And scatheless the sea. 



lO 



That the roar of the banks they breasted 
Is hurtless as bellowing of herds, 

And the strength of his wings that invested 
The wind, as the strength of a bird's; 

As the sea-mew's might or the swallow's 
That cry to him back if he cries, 

As over the graves and their hollows 
Days darken and rise. 



II 



As the souls of the dead men disburdened 
And clean of the sins that they sinned, 

With a lovelier than man's life guerdoned 
And delight as a wave's in the wind, 

And delight as the -wind's in the billow, 
Birds pass, and deride with their glee 

The flesh that has dust for its pillow 
As wrecks have the sea. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



12 



197 



When the days of the sun wax dimmer, 
Wings flash through the dusk like beams; 

As the clouds in the lit sky glimmer, 
The bird in the graveyard gleams; 

As the cloud at its wing's edge whitens 
When the clarions of sunrise are heard. 

The graves that the bird's note brightens 
Grow bright for the bird. 



13 



As the waves of the numberless waters 
.That the wind cannot number who guides 

Are the sons of the shore and the daughters 
Here lulled by the chime of the tides: 

And here in the press of them standing 
We know not if these or if we 

Live truliest, or anchored to landing 
Or drifted to sea. 



14 



In the valley he named of decision 
No denser were multitudes met 

When the soul of the seer in her vision 
Saw nations for doom of them set; 

Saw darkness in dawn, and the splendor 
Of judgment, the sword and the rod; 

But the doom here of death is more tender 
And gentler the god. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



15 



And gentler the wind from the dreary 
Sea-banks by the waves overlapped, 

Being weary, speaks peace to the weary 

From slopes that the tide-stream hath sapped; 

And sweeter than all that we call so 
The seal of their slumber shall be, 

Till the graves that embosom them also, 
Be sapped of the sea. 



AFTER LOOKING INTO CARLYLE'S 
REMINISCENCES. 



Three men lived yet when this dead man was young 
Whose names and words endure forever: one 
Whose eyes grew dim with stralining toward the sun, 

And his wings weakened, and his angel's tongue 

Lost half the sweetest song was ever sung. 

But like the strain half uttered earth hears none. 
Nor shall man hear till all men's songs are done: 

One whose clear spirit like an eagle hung 

Between the mountains hallowed by his love 

And the sky stainless as his soul above: 
And one the sweetest heart that ever spake 

The brightest words wherein sweet wisdom smiled. 

These deathless names by this dead snake defiled 
Bid memory spit UDcn him for their sake^ 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 199 



II 



Sweet heart, forgive me for thine own sweet sake, 
Whose kind blithe soul such seas of sorrow swam, 
And for my love's sake, powerless as I am 
For love to praise thee, or like thee to make 
Music of mirth where hearts less pure would break, 
Less pure than thine, our life-unspotted Lamb. 
Things hatefullest thou hadst not heart to damn, 
Nor wouldst have set thine heel on this dead snake. 
Let worms consume its memory with its tongue, 
The fang that stabbed fair Truth, the lip that stung 

Men's memories uncorroded with its breath „ 
Forgive me, that with bitter words like his 
I mix the gentlest English name that is. 

The tenderest held of all that know not death. 



EUTHANATOS. 

In memory of Mrs. Thellusson 

Forth of our ways and woes, 
Forth of the winds and snows 
A white soul soaring goes. 

Winged like a dove: 
So sweet, so pure, so clear, 
So heavenly tempered here, 
Love need not hope or fear her changed above: 

Ere dawned her day to die, 

So heavenly, that on high 

Change could not glorify 

Nor death refine her: 



200 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Pure gold of perfect love, 
On earth like heaven's own dove, 
She cannot wear, above, a smile diviner. 

Her voice in heaven's own quire 
Can sound no heavenlier lyre 
Than here: no purer fire 

Her soul can soar: 
No sweeter stars her eyes 
In unimagined skies 
Beyond our sight can rise than here before. 

Hardly long years had shed 
Their shadows on her head: 
Hardly we think her dead, 
Who hardly thought her 
Old: hardly can believe 
The grief our hearts receive 
And wonder while they grieve, as wrong were wrought her. 

But though strong grief be strong 
No word or thought of wrong 
May stain the trembling song. 

Wring the bruised heart, 
That sounds or sighs its faint 
Low note of love, nor taint 
Grief for so sweet a saint, when such depart. 

A saint whose perfect soul. 
With perfect love for goal. 
Faith hardly might control. 

Creeds might not harden: 
A flower more splendid far 
Than the most radiant star 
Seen here of all that are in God's own garden. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 201 

Surely the stars we see 
Rise and relapse as we, 
And change and set, may be 

But shadows too. 
But spirits that man's lot 
Could neither mar nor spot 
Like these false lights are not, being heavenly true. 

Not like these dying lights 
Of worlds whose glory smites 
The passage of the night 

Through heaven's blind prison: 
Not like their souls who see, 
If thought fly far and free. 
No heavenlier heaven to be for souls rerisen. 

A soul wherein love shone 
Even like the sun, alone. 
With fervor of its own 

And splendor fed, 
Made by no creeds less kind 
Toward souls by none confined, 
Could Death's self quench or blind, Love's self were dead. 



A CHILD'S LAUGHTER. 

All the bells of heaven may ring. 
All the birds of heaven may sing, 
All the wells on earth may spring, 
All the winds on earth may bring 

All sweet sounds together; 
Sweeter far than all things heard. 



202 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



Hand of harper, tone of bird, 
Sound of woods at sundawn stirred, 
Welling water's winsome word, 
Wind in warm wan weather. 



One thing yet there is, that none 
Hearing ere its chime be done 
Knows not well the sweetest one 
Heard of man beneath the sun, 

Hoped in heaven hereafter; 
Soft and strong and loud and light, 
Very sound of very light 
Heard from morning's rosiest height, 
When the soul of all delight 

Fills a child's clear laughter. 

Golden bells of welcome rolled 
Never forth such notes, nor told 
Hours so blithe in tones so bold, 
As the radiant mouth of gold 

Here that rings forth heaven. 
If the golden-crested wren 
Were a nightingale — why, then, 
Something seen and heard of men 
Might be half as sv/eet as when 

Laughs a child of seven. 



A CHILD'S THANKS. 

How low soe'er men rank us, 

How high soe'er we win, 
The children far above us 
Dwell, and they deign to love us, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

With lovelier love than ours, 
And smiles more sweet than flowers; 
As though the sun should thank us 
For letting light come in. 

With too divine complaisance, 
Whose grace misleads them thus, 

Being gods, in heavenly blindness 

They call our worship kindness, 

Our pebble-gift a gem: 

They think us good to them. 

Whose glance, whose breath, whose presence, 
Are gifts too good for us. 

The poet high and hoary 

Of meres that mountains bind 

Felt his great heart more often 

Yearn, and its proud strength soften 

From stem to tenderer mood, 

At thought of gratitude 

Shown than of song or story 
He heard of hearts unkind. 

But with what words for token 

And what adoring tears 
Of reverence risen to passion, 
In what glad prostrate fashion 
Of spirit and soul subdued. 
May man show gratitude 
For thanks of children spoken 

That hover in his ears? 

The angels laugh, your brothers, 

Child, hearing you thank me. 
With eyes whence night grows sunny, 
And touch of lips like honey. 



203 



204 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

And words like honey-dew: 
But how shall I thank you? 
For gifts above all others 
What guerdon-gift may be? 

What wealth of words caressing, 

What choice of songs found best, 
Would seem not as derision, ' 
Found vain beside the vision 
And glory from above 
Shown in a child's heart's love? 
His part in life is blessing; 
Ours, only to be blest. 



THRENODY. 

October 6, 1892. 
I 

Life, sublime and serene when time had power upon it and 

ruled its breath, 
Changed it, bade it be glad or sad, and hear what change 

in the world's ear saith. 
Shines more fair in the starrier air whose glory lightens 

the dusk of death. 

Suns that sink on the wan sea's brink, and moons that kindle 

and flame and fade, 
Leave more clear for the darkness here the stars that set not 

^nd see not shade 
Rise and rise on the lowlier skies by rule of sunlight and 

moonlight swayed. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 205 

So, when night for his eyes grew bright, his proud head pil- 
lowed on Shakespeare's breast. 

Hand in hand with him, soon to stand where shine the 
glories that death loves best, 

Passed the Hght of his face from sight, and sank sublimely 
to radiant rest. 

II 

Far above us and all our love, beyond all reach of its voice- 
less praise. 

Shines for ever the name that never shall feel the shade 
of the changeful days 

Fall and chill the delight that still sees winter's light on 
it shine like May's. 

Strong as death is the dark day's breath whose blast has 

withered the life we see 
Here where light is the child of night, and less than visions 

or dreams are we: 
Strong as death; but a word, a breath, a dream is stronger 

than death can bCo 

Strong as truth and superb in youth eternal, fair as the sun- 
dawn's flame 

Seen when May on her first-born day bids earth exult in 
her radiant name. 

Lives, clothed round with its praise and crowned with love 
that dies not, his love-lit fame. 

Ill 

Fairer far than the morning star, and sweet for us as the 

songs that rang 
Loud through heaven from the choral Seven when all the 

stars of the morning sang, 
Shines the song that we loved so long — since first such love 

in us flamed and sprang. 



2o6 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

England glows as a sunlit rose from mead to mountain, from 

sea to sea, 
Bright with love and with pride above all taint of sorrow 

that needs must be, 
Needs must live for an hour, and give its rainbow's glory 

to lawn and lea. 

Not through tears shall the new-born years behold him, 

crowned with applause of men. 
Pass at last from a lustrous past to life that lightens beyond 

their ken, 
Glad and dead, and from earthward led to sunward, guided 

of Imogen. 



MUSIC: AN ODE. 



Was it light that spake from the darkness, or music that 

shone from the word. 
When the night was enkindled with sound of the sun or 

the first-born bird? 
Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage of seasons 

that fall and rise, 
Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh, and blinded 

with light that dies, 
Lived not surely till music spake, and the spirit of life was 

heard. 



II 



Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be, 
Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man, and the thrall was 
free. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 207 

Slave of nature and serf of time, the bondman of life and 

death, 
Dumb with passionless patience that breathed but forlorn 

and reluctant breath, 
Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer, and communed 

aloud with the sea. 



Ill 



Morning spake, and he heard: and the passionate silent 

noon 
Kept for him not silence: and soft from the mounting 

moon 
Fell the sound of her splendor, heard as dawn's in the 

breathless night. 
Not of men but of birds whose note bade man's soul quicken 

and leap to light: 
And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness of 

earth were as chords in tune. 



THE MONUMENT OF GIORDANO BRUNO. 



Not from without us, only from within, 
Comes or can ever come upon us light 
Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight. 
No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win. 
No grace for guidance, no release from sin,- 
Save of his own soul's giving. Deep and bright 
As fire enkindled in the core of night 
Burns in the soul where once its fire has been 
The light that leads and quickens thought, inspired 



2o8 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

To doubt and trust and conquer. So .^e said 
Whom Sidney, flower of England, lordliest head 
Of all we love, loved: but the fates required 
A sacrifice to hate and hell, ere fame 
Should set with his in heaven Giordano's name. 



II 



Cover thin eyes and weep, O child of hell, 

Grey spouse of Satan, Church of name abhorred. 
Weep, withered harlot, with thy weeping lord, 

Now none will buy the heaven thou hast to sell 

At price of prostituted souls, and swell 

Thy loveless list of lovers. Fire and sword 

No more are thine: the steel, the wheel, the cord. 

The flames that rose round living limbs, and fell 

In lifeless ash and ember, now no more 

Approve thee godlike. Rome, redeemed at last 
From all the red pollution of thy past. 

Acclaims the grave bright face that smiled of yore 
Even on the fire that caught it round and clomb 
To cast its ashes on the face of Rome. 

June 9, 1889. 



DEDICATION. 

1893. 



The sea of the years that endure not 
Whose tide shall endure till we die 

And know what the seasons assure not, 
If death be or life be a lie, 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Sways hither the spirit and thither, 

A waif in the swing of the sea 
Whose wrecks are of memories that wither 
As leaves of a tree. 

We hear not and hail not with greeting 
The sound of the wings of the years, 

The storm of the sound of them beating, 
That none till it pass from him hears: 

But tempest not calm can imperil 
The treasures that fade not or fly; 

Change bids them not change and be sterile, 
Death bids them not die. 

Hearts plighted in youth to the royal 
High service of hope and of song, 

Sealed fast for endurance as loyal, 

And proved of the years as they throng, 

Conceive not, believe not, and fear not 
That age may be other than youth; 

That faith and that friendship may hear not 
And utter not truth. 

Not yesterday's light nor to-morrow's 
Gleams nearer or clearer than gleams, 

Though joys be forgotten and sorrows 
Forgotten as changes of dreams. 

The dawn of the days unforgotten 
That noon could eclipse not or slay, 

Whose fruits were as children begotten 
Of dawn upon day. 

The years that were flowerful and fruitless, 
The years that were fruitful and dark. 

The hopes that were radiant and rootless. 
The hopes that were winged for their mark, 



209 



210 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Lie soft in the sepulchres fashioned 
Of hours that arise and subside, 
Absorbed and subdued and impassioned, 
In pain or in pride. 

But far in the night that entombs them 
The starshine as sunshine is strong, 

And clear through the cloud that resumes them 
Remembrance, a light and a song. 

Rings lustrous as music and hovers 
As birds that impend on the sea. 

And thoughts that their prison-house covers 
Arise and are free. 

Forgetfulness deep as a prison 

Holds days that are dead for us fast 

Till the sepulchre sees rearisen 
The spirit whose reign is the past, 

Disentrammelled of darkness, and kindled 
With life that is mightier than death. 

When the life that obscured it has dwindled 
And passed as a breath. 

But time nor oblivion may darken 

Remembrance whose name will be joy 

While memory forgets not to hearken, 
"Urhile manhood forgets not the boy 

Who heard and exulted in hearing 
The songs of the sunrise of youth 

Ring radiant above him, unfearing 
And joyous as truth. 

Truth, winged and enkindled with rapture 
And sense of the radiance of yore. 

Fulfilled you with power to recapture 
What never might singer before — 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 2II 

The life, the delight, and the sorrow 
Of troublous and chivalrous years 
That knew not of night or of morrow, 
Of hopes or of fears. 

But wider the wing and the vision 

That quicken the spirit have spread, 
Since memory beheld with derision 

Man's hope to be more than his dead. 
From the mists and the snows and the thunders, 

Your spirit has brought for us forth 
Light, music, and joy in the wonders 
And charms of the north. 

The wars and the woes and the glories 

That quicken and lighten and rain 
From the clouds of its chronicled stories, 

The passion, the pride, and the pain. 
Whose echoes were mute and the token 

Was lost of the spells that they spake, 
Rise bright at your bidding, unbroken 
Of ages that break. 

For you, and for none of us other. 

Time is not: the dead that must live 
Hold commune with you as a brother 

By grace of the life that you give. 
The heart that was in them is in you. 

Their soul in your spirit endures: 
The strength of their song is the sinew 
Of this that is yours. 

Hence is it that life, everlasting 

As light and as music, abides 
In the sound of the surge of it, casting 

Sound back to the surge of the tides. 



212 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Till sons of the sons of the Norsemen 
Watch, hurtling to windward and lee, 
Round England, unbacked of her horsemen, 
The steeds of the sea. 



A SWIMMER'S DREAM. 

November 4, 1889. 
Somno mollior unda. 

I 
Dawn is dim on the dark soft water, 

Soft and passionate, dark and sweet. 
Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter, 

Fair and flawless from face to feet, 
Hailed of all when the world was golden, 
Loved of lovers whose names beholden 
Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden 

Days more glad than their flight was fleet. 

So they sang: but for men that love her. 
Souls that hear not her word in vain, 
Earth beside her and heaven above her 
Seem but shadows that wax and wane. 
Softer than sleep's are the sea's caresses. 
Kinder than love's that betrays and blesses, 
Blither than spring's when her flowerful tresses 
Shake forth sunlight and shine with rain. 

All the strength of the waves that perish 
Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs. 

Sighs for love of the life they cherish, 
Laughs to know that it lives and dies, 

Dies for joy of its life, and lives 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 213 

Thrilled with joy that its brief death gives — 
Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives 
Change that bids it subside and rise. 

II 
Hard and heavy, remote but nearing, 

Sunless hangs the severe sky's weight, 
Cloud on cloud, though the wind be veering 

Heaped on high to the sundawn's gate. 
Dawn and even and noon are one, 
Veiled with vapor and void of sun; 
Nought in sight or in fancied hearing 

Now less mighty than time or fate. 

The grey sky gleams and the grey seas glimmer, 

Pale and sweet as a dream's delight. 
As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer, 

Touched by dawn or subdued by night. 
The dark wind, stern and sublime and sad, 
Swings the rollers to westward, clad 
With lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer, 

Lures and lulls him with dreams of light. 

Light, and sleep, and delight, and wonder, 

Change, and rest, and a charm of cloud. 
Fill the world of the skies whereunder 
Heaves and quivers and pants aloud 
All the world of the waters, hoary 
Now, but clothed with its own live glory, 
That mates the lightning and mocks the thunder 
With light more living and word more proud. 

Ill 

Far off westward, whither sets the sounding strife. 
Strife more sweet than peace, of shoreless waves whose glee 
Scorns the shore and loves the wind that leaves them free, 



214 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Strange as sleep and pale as death and fair as life, 
Shifts the moonlight-colored sunshine on the sea. 

Toward the sunset's goal the sunless waters crowd, 
Fast as autumn days toward winter: yet it seems 
Here that autumn wanes not, here that woods and streams 

Lose not heart and change not likeness, chilled and bowed 
Warped and wrinkled: here the days are fair as dreams. 

IV 

O russet-robed November, 

What ails thee so to smile? 
Chill August, pale September, 

Endured a woful while, 
And fell as falls an ember 

From forth a fiameless pile: 
But golden-girt November 

Bids all she looks on smile. 

The lustrous foliage, waning 

As wanes the morning moon, 
Here falling, here refraining. 

Outbraves the pride of June 
With statelier semblance, feigning • 

No fear lest death be soon: 
As though the woods thus waning 

Should wax to meet the moon- 
As though, when fields lie stricken 

By grey December's breath, 
These lordlier growths that sicken 

And die for fear of death. 
Should feel the sense requicken 

That hears what springtide saith 
And thrills for love, spring-stricken 

And pierced with April's breath. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

The keen white-winged north-easter 

That stings and spurs thy sea 
Doth yet but feed and feast her 

With glowing sense of glee: 
Calm chained her, storm released her. 

And storm's glad voice was he: 
South-wester or north-easter, 

Thy winds rejoice the sea. 

V 

A dream, a dream is it all — the season. 
The sky, the water, the wind, the shore? 

A day-born dream of divine unreason, 
A marvel moulded of sleep — no more? 

For the cloudlike wave that my limbs while cleaving 

Feel as in slumber beneath them heaving 

Soothes the sense as to slumber, leaving 
Sense of nought that wcis known of yore. 

A purer passion, a lordlier leisure, 

A peace more happy than lives on land, 
Fulfils with pulse of diviner pleasure 

The dreaming head and the steering hand. 
I lean my cheek to the cold grey pillow. 
The deep soft swell of the full broad billow, 
And close mine eyes for delight past measure. 
And wish the wheel of the world would stand. 

The wild-winged hour that we fain would capture 
Falls as from heaven that its light feet clomb, 

So brief, so soft, and so full the rapture 
Was felt that soothed me with sense of home. 

To sleep, to swim, and to dream, for ever — 

Such joy the vision of man saw never; 

For here too soon will a dark day sever 

The sea-bird's wing from the sea-wave's foam. 



215 



2 1 6 SWINB URNE'S POEMS 

A dream, and more than a dream, and dimmer 
At once and brighter than dreams that flee, 

The moment's joy of the seaward swimmer 
Abides, remembered as truth may be. 

Not all the joy and not all the glory 

Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary; 

For there the downs and the sea-banks glimmer, 
And here to south of them swells the sea. 



A NYMPHOLEPT. 

Summer, and noon, and a splendor of silence, felt. 
Seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense. 
Soft through the frondage the shades of the sunbeams melt. 
Sharp through the foliage the shafts of them, keen and 

dense, 
Cleave, as discharged from the string of the God's bow, 
tense 
\s a war-steed's girth, and bright as a warrior's belt. 
Ah, why should an hour that is heaven for an hour pass 
hence? 

[ dare not sleep for delight of the perfect hour. 

Lest God be wroth that his gift should be scorned of man. 
The face of the warm bright world is the face of a flower, 
The word of the wind and the leaves that the light winds 

fan 
As the word that quickened at first into flame, and ran, 
Creative and subtle and fierce with invasive power. 
Through darkness and cloud, from the breath of the one 
God, Pan. 

The perfume of earth possessed by the sun pervades 
The chaster air that he soothes but with sense of sleep. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



217 



Soft, imminent, strong as desire that prevails and fades, 
The passing noon that beholds not a cloudlet weep 
Imbues and impregnates life with delight more deep 

Than dawn or sunset or moonrise on lawns or glades 
Can shed from the skies that receive it and may not keep.; 

The skies may hold not the splendor of sundown fast; 

It wanes into twilight as dawn dies down into day. 
And the moon, triumphant when twilight is overpast. 

Takes pride but awhile in the hours of her stately sway. 

But the might of the noon, though the light of it pass away, 
Leaves earth fulfilled of desires and of dreams that last; 

But if any there be that hath sense of them none can say. 

For if any there be that hath sight of them, sense, or trust 
Made strong by the might of a vision, the strength of a 
dream. 
His lips shall straiten and close as a dead man's must, 
His heart shall be sealed as the voice of a frost-bound 

stream. 
For the deep mid mystery of light and of heat that seem 
To clasp and pierce dark earth, and enkindle dust. 

Shall a man's faith say what it is? or a man's guess deem? 

Sleep lies not heavier on eyes that have watched all night 

Than hangs the heat of the noon on the hills and trees. 
Why now should the haze not open, and yield to sight 

A fairer secret than hope or than slumber sees? 

I seek not heaven with submission of lips and knees. 
With worship and prayer for a sign till it leap to light: 

I gaze on the gods about me, and call on these. 

I call on the gods hard by, the divine dim powers 
Whose likeness is here at hand, in the breathless air, 

In the pulseless peace of the fervid and silent flowers. 
In the faint sweet speech of the waters th?«^ -"'-' ''*®- 



2i8 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

Ah, what should darkeness do in a world so fair? 
The bent-grass heaves not, the couch-grass quails not or 
cowers; 
The wind's kiss frets not the rowan's or aspen's hair. 

But the silence trembles with passion of sound suppressed. 
And the twilight quivers and yearns to the sunward, wrung 

With love as with pain; and the wide wood's motionless 
breast 
Is thrilled with a dumb desire that would fain find tongue 
And palpitates, tongueless as she whom a man-snake stung, 

\'VTiose heart now heaves in the nightingale, never at rest 
Nor satiated ever with song till her last be sung. 

Is it rapture or terror that circles m.e round, and invades 

Each vein of my life with hope — if it be not fear? 
Each pulse that awakens my blood into rapture fades, 

Each pulse that subsides into dread of a strange thing 
near 

Requickens with sense of a terror less dread than dear. 
Is peace not one with light in the deep green glades 

Where summer at noonday slumbers? Is peace not here? 

The tall thin stems of the firs, and the roof sublime 

That screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood, 

Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time. 
Stand fast as ever in sight of the night they stood, 
When night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could. 

The dense ferns deepen, the moss glows warm as the thyme: 
The wild heath quivers about me: the world is good. 

Is it Pan's breath, fierce in the tremulous maidenhair. 
That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, 
felt 
In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air, 
In the stress of the sun? For here has the great God 
dwelt: 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



2ig 



For hence were the shaftg of his love or his anger dealt. 
For here has his wrath been fierce as his love was fair, 
When each was as fire to the darkness its breath bade melt. 

Is it love, is it dread, that enkindles the trembling noon. 

That yearns, reluctant in rapture that fear has fed. 
As man for woman, as woman for man? Full soon, 

If I live, and the life that may look on him drop not 
dead. 

Shall the ear that hears not a leaf quake hear his tread 
The sense that knows not the sound of the deep day's tune 

Receive the God, be it love that he brings or dread. 

The naked noon is upon me: the fierce dumb spell. 
The fearful charm of the strong sun's imminent might, 

Unmerciful, steadfast, deeper than seas that swell. 
Pervades, invades, appals me with loveless light, 
With harsher awe than breathes in the breath of night. 

Have mercy, God who art all! For I know thee well. 
How sharp is thine eye to lighten, thine hand to smite. 

The whole wood feels thee, the whole air fears thee: but fear 
So deep, so dim, so sacred, is wellnigh sweet. 

For the light that hangs and broods on the woodlands here, 
Intense, invasive, intolerant, imperious, and meet 
To lighten the works of thine hands and the ways of thy 
feet, 

Is hot with the fire of the breath of thy life, and dear 
As hope that shrivels or shrinks not for frost or heat. 

Thee, thee the supreme dim godhead, approved afar. 
Perceived of the soul and conceived of the sense of man, 

We scarce dare love, and we dare not fear: the star 
We call the sun, that lit us when life began 
To brood on the world that is thine by his grace for a 
span, 



220 SWINBlfRNE'S POEMS 

Conceals and reveals in the semblance of things that aire 
Thine imminent presence, the pulse of thy heart's life, Pan. 

The fierce mid noon that awakens and warms the snake 
Conceals thy mercy, reveals thy wrath: and again 

The dew-bright hour that assuages the twilight brake 
Conceals thy wrath and reveals thy mercy: then 
Thou art fearful only for evil souls of men 

That feel with nightfall the serpent within them wake, 
And hate the holy darkness on glade and glen. 

Yea, then we know not and dream not if ill things be. 
Or if aught of the work of the wrong of the world be thine. 

We hear not the footfall of terror that treads the sea. 
We hear not the moan of winds that assail the pine: 
We see not if shipwreck reign in the storm's dim shrine; 

If death do service and doom bear witness to thee 
We see not, — ^know not if blood for thy lips be wine. 

But in all things evil and fearful that fear may scan, 

As in all things good, as in all things fair that fall. 
We know thee present and latent, the lord of man; 
In the murmuring of doves, in the clamoring of winds 

that call 
And wolves that howl for their prey; in the midnight's 
pall, 
[n the naked and nymph-like feet of the dawn, O Pan, 
And in each life living, O thou the God who art all. 

Smiling and singing, wailing and wringing of hands. 
Laughing and weeping, watching and sleeping, still 

Proclaim but and prove but thee, as the shifted sands 
Speak forth and show but the strength of the sea's wild will 
That sifts and grinds them as grain in the storm-wind's 
mill. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 221 

In thee is the doom that falls and the doom that stands: 
The tempests utter thy word, and the stars fulfil. 

Where Etna shudders with passion and pain volcanic 

That rend her heart as with anguish that rends a man's, 
Where Typho labors, and finds not his thews Titanic, 
In breathless torment that ever the flame's breath fans. 
Men felt and feared thee of old, whose pastoral clans 
Were given to the charge of thy keeping; and soundless 
panic 
Held fast the woodland whose depths and whose heights 
were Pan's. 

And here, though fear be less than delight, and awe 
Be one with desire and with worship of earth and thee, 

So mild seems now thy secret and speechless law, 
So fair and fearless and faithful and godlike she, 
So soft the spell of thy whisper on stream and sea, 

Yet man should fear lest he see what of old men saw 
And withered: yet shall I quail if thy breath smite me. 

Lord God of life and of light and of all things fair, 

Lord God of ravin and ruin and all things dim, 
Death seals up life, and darkens the sunbright air, 

And the stars that watch blind earth in the deep night 

swim, 
Laugh, saying, "What God is your God, that ye call on 
him? 
What is man, that the God who is guide of our way should 
care 
If day for a man be golden, or night be grim?" 

But thou, dost thou hear? Stars too but abide for a span, 
Gods too but endure for a season; but thou, if thou be 

God, more than shadows conceived and adored of man. 
Kind Gods and fierce, that bound him or made him free, 



222 SWINB URNE'S POEMS 

The skies that scorn us are less in thy sight than we, 

Whose souls have strength to conceive and perceive thee, Pan, 

With sense more subtle than senses that hear and see. 

Yet may not it say, though it seek thee and think to find 
One soul of sense in the fire and the frost-bound clod, 

What heart is this, what spirit alive or blind, 
That moves thee: only we know that the ways we trod 
We tread, with hands unguided, with feet unshod. 

With eyes unlightened; and yet, if with steadfast mind. 
Perchance may we find thee and know thee at last for 
God. 

Yet then should God be dark as the dawn is bright. 
And bright as the night is dark on the world — no more. 

Light slays not darloiess, and darkness absorbs not light; 
And the labor of evil and good from the years of yore 
Is even as the labor of waves on a sunless shore. 

And he who is first and last, who is depth and height, 
Keeps silence now, as the sun when the woods wax hoar. 

The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life 

Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread, 
Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife, 

Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead. 

No service of bended knee or of humbled head 
May soothe or subdue the God who had change to wife: 

And life with death is as morning with evening wed. 

And yet, if the light and the life in the light that here 

Seem soft and splendid and fervid as sleep may seem 
Be more than the shine of a smile or the flash of a tear, 

Sleep, change, and death are less than a spell-struck 
dream. 

And fear than the fall of a leaf on a starlit sti'eam. 
And yet, if the hope that hath said it absorb not fear, 

Vvl:at heirs it man that the stars and the waters gleam.? 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 223 

What helps it man, that the noon be indeed intense, 
The night be indeed worth worship? Fear and pain 

Were lords and masters yet of the secret sense. 

Which now dares deem not that light is as darkness, fain 
Though dark dreams be to declare it, crying in vain. 

For whence, thou God of the light and the darkness, whence 
Dawns now this vision that bids not the sunbeams wane? 

What light, what shadow, diviner than dawn or night, 
Draws near, makes pause, and again — or I dream — draws 
near? 
More soft than shadow, more strong than the strong sun's 
light, 
More pure than moonbeams — yea, but the rays run sheer 
As fire from the sun through the dusk of the pinewood, 
clear 
And constant; yea, but the shadow itself is bright 

That the light clothes round with love that is one with 
fear. 

Above and behind it the noon and the woodland lie. 

Terrible, radiant with mystery, superb and subdued. 
Triumphant in silence; and hardly the sacred sky 

Seems free from the tyrannous weight of the dumb fierce 
mood 

Which rules as with fire and invasion of beams that brood 
The breathless rapture of earth till its hour pass by 

And leave her spirit released and her peace renewed. 

I sleep not: never in sleep has a man beholden 

This. From the shadow that trembles and yearns with 
light 

Suppressed and elate and reluctant — obscure and golden 
As water kindled with presage of dawn or night — 
A form, a face, a wonder to sense and sight. 



224 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



Grows great as the moon through the month; and her eyes 
embolden 
Fear, till it change to desire, and desire to delight. 

I sleep not: sleep would die of a dream so strange; 

A dream so sweet would die as a rainbow dies. 
As a sunbow laughs and is lost on the waves that range 

And reck not of light that flickers or spray that flies. 

But the sun withdraws not, the woodland shrinks not or 
sighs, 
No sweet thing sickens with sense or with fear of change; 

Light wounds not, darkness blinds not, my steadfast eyes. 

Only the soul in my sense that receives the soul 
Whence now my spirit is kindled with breathless bliss 

Knows well if the light that wounds it with love makes whole, 
If hopes that carol be louder than fears that hiss. 
If truth be spoken of flowers and of waves that kiss, 

Of clouds and stars that contend for a sunbright goal. 
And yet may I dream that I dream not indeed of this? 

An earth-born dreamer, constrained by the bonds of birth, 
Held fast by the flesh, compelled by his veins that beat 

And kindle to rapture or wrath, to desire or to mirth. 
May hear not surely the fall of immortal feet. 
May feel not surely if heaven upon earth be sweet; 

And here is my sense fulfilled of the joys of earth. 

Light, silence, bloom, shade, murmur of leaves that meet. 

Bloom, fervor, and perfume of grasses and flowers aglow, 

Breathe and brighten about me: the darkness gleams, 
The sweet light shivers and laughs on the slopes below. 

Made soft by leaves that lighten and change like dreams; 

The silence thrills with the whisper of secret streams 
That well from the heart of the woodland: these I know: 

Earth bore them, heaven sustained them with shower.s 
and beams. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



225 



I lean my face to the heather, and drink the sun 

Whose flame-lit odor satiates the flowers: mine eyes 
Close, and the goal of delight and of life is one: 

No more I crave of earth or her kindred skies. 

No more? But the joy that springs from them smiles and 
flies: 
The sweet work wrought of them surely, the good work done, 

If the mind and the face of the season be loveless, dies. 

Thee, therefore, thee would I come to, cleave to, cling. 
If haply thy heart be kind and thy gifts be good. 

Unknown sweet spirit, whose vesture is soft in spring. 
In summer splendid, in autumn pale as the wood 
That shudders and wanes and shrinks as a shamed thing 
should. 

In winter bright as the mail of a war-worn king 

Who stands where foes fled far from the face of him stood. 

My spirit or thine is it, breath of thy life or of mine, 

Which fills my sense with a rapture that casts out fear? 
Pan's dim frown wanes, and his wild eyes brighten as thine, 

Transformed as night or as day by the kindling year. 

Earth-born, or mine eye were withered that sees, mine ear 
That hears were stricken to death by the sense divine. 

Earth-born I know thee: but heaven is about me here. 

The terror that whispers in darkness and flames in light. 
The doubt that speaks in the silence of earth and sea, 

The sense, more fearful at noon than in midmost night. 
Of wrath scarce hushed and of imminent ill to be. 
Where are they? Heaven is as earthy and as heaven to me 

Earth: for the shadows that sundered them here take flight; 
And nought is all, as am I, but a dream of thee. 



226 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

THE PALACE OF PAN. 

Inscribed to my Mother. 

September, all glorious with gold, as a king 

In the radiance of triumph attired, 
Outlightening the summer, outsweetening the spring, 
Broods wide on the woodlands with limitless wing, 

A presence of all men desired. 

Far eastward and westward the sun-colored lands 

Smile warm as the light on them smiles ; 
And statelier than temples upbuilded with hands. 
Tall column by column, the sanctuary stands 

Of the pine-forest's infinite aisles. 

Mute worship, too fervent for praise or for prayer, 

Possesses the spirit with peace, 
•Fulfilled with the breath of the luminous air. 
The fragrance, the silence, the shadows as fair 

As the rays that recede or increase. 

Ridged pillars that redden aloft and aloof. 

With never a branch for a nest. 
Sustain the sublime indivisible roof. 
To the storm and the sun in his majesty proof, 

And awful as waters at rest. 

Man's hand hath not measured the height of them, thought 

May measure not, awe may not know; 
In its shadow the woofs of the woodland are wrought; 
As a bird is the sun in the toils of them caught, 

And the flakes of it scattered as snow. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

As the shreds of a plumage of gold on the ground 

The sun-flakes by multitudes lie, 
Shed loose as the petals of roses discrowned 
On the floors of the forest engilt and embrowned 

And reddened afar and anigh. 

Dim centuries with darkling inscrutable hands 

Have reared and secluded the shrine 
For gods that we know not, and kindled as brands 
On the altar the years that are dust, and their sands 

Time's glass has forgotten for sign, 

A temple whose transepts are measured by miles. 

Whose chancel has morning for priest, 
Whose floor-work the foot of no spoiler defiles, 
Whose musical silence no music beguiles. 

No festivals limit its feast. 

The noon's ministration, the night's and the dawn's, 

Conceals not, reveals not for man, 
On the slopes of the herbless and blossomless lawns. 
Some track of a nymph's or some trail of a faun's 

To the place of the slumber of Pan. 

Thought, kindled and quickened by worship and wonder 

To rapture too sacred for fear 
On the ways that unite or divide them in sunder. 
Alone may discern if about them or under 

Be token or trace of him here. 

With passionate awe that is deeper than panic 

The spirit subdued and unshaken 
Takes heed of the godhead terrene and Titanic 
Whose footfall is felt on the breach of volcanic 

Sharp steeps that their fire has forsaken. 



227 



228 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

By a spell more serene than the dim necromantic 

Dead charms of the past and the night, 
Or the terror that lurked in the noon to make frantic 
Where Etna takes shape from the limbs of gigantic 
Dead gods disanointed of might, 

The spirit made one with the spirit whose breath 

Makes noon in the woodland sublime 
Abides as entranced in a presence that saith 
Things loftier than life and serener than death, 

Triumphant and silent as time. 

Pine Ridge: September, 1893. 



A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF 
ROBERT BROWNING. 

I 

The clearest eyes in all the world they read 

With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true 
Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew 

Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed, 

As they the light of ages quick and dead. 

Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew 
Can slay not one of all the works we knew, 

Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head. 

The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought, 

And moulded of unconquerable thought. 
And quickened with imperishable flame. 

Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought 
May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame. 
Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name. 

December 13, 1889. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



II 



229 



Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom 
Time is not lord, but servant? What least part 
Of all the fire that fed his living heart. 

Of all the light more keen than sundawn's bloom 

That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom 

And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart 
Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what 
thou art, 

A shadow born of terror's barren womb. 

That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou, 

To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow, 

That power on him is given thee, — that thy breath 

Can make him less than love acclaims him now. 
And hears all time sound back the word it saith? 
What part hast thou then in his glory, Death? 

Ill 

A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve: 
Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand. 
Hath slain the lover of her sunbright strand 

And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve. 

A graceless guerdon we that loved receive 
For all our love, from that the dearest land 
Love worshipped ever. Blithe and soft and bland, 

Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave. 

Shone on our dreams and memories evermore 

The domes, the towers, the mountains and the shore 
That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black 

Seems now the face we loved as he of yore. 

We have given thee love — no stint, no stay, no lack: 
What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back? 



230 SWINBURNE'S POEMS 

IV 

But he — to him, who knows what gift is thine, 
Death? Hardly may we think or hope, when we 
Pass likewise thither where to-night is he, 

Beyond the irremeable outer seas that shine 

And darken round such dreams as half divine 
Some sunlit harbor in that starless sea 
Where gleams no ship to windward or to lee, 

To read with him the secret of thy shrine. 

There too, as here, may song, delight, and love, 
The nightingale, the sea-bird, and the dove. 

Fulfil with joy the splendor of the sky 
Till all beneath wax bright as all above: 

But none of all that search the heavens, and try 
The sun, may m^atch the sovereign eagle's eye. 

December 14. 



Among the wondrous ways 01 men and time 
He went as one that ever found and sought 
And bore in hand the lamplike spirit of thought 
To illume with instance of its fire sublime 
The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime. 

No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought, 
No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought 
That blooms in wisdom, nought that bums in crime, 
No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light, 
No love more lovely than the snows are white, 

No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb, 
No song-bird singing from some live soul's height, 
But he might hear, interpret, or illume 
With sense in^/asive as the da^vn of doom. 



SWINBURNE'S POEMS 



VI 



231 



What secret thing of splendor or of shade 

Surmised in all those wandering ways wherein 
Man, led of love and life and death and sin, 

Strays, climbs, or cowers, allured, absorbed, afraid. 

Might not the strong and sunlike sense invade 
Of that full soul that had for aim to win 
Light, silent over time's dark toil and din. 

Life, at whose touch death fades as dead things fade? 

O spirit of man, what mystery moves in thee 

That he might know not of in spirit, and see 
The heart within the heart that seems to strive, 

The life within the life that seems to be. 

And hear, through all thy storms that whirl and drive, 
The living soimd of all men's souls alive? 

VII 

He held no dream worth waking: so he said, 
He who stands now on death's triumphal steep, 
Awakened out of life wherein we sleep 

And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead. 

But never death for him was dark or dread: 

"Look forth," he bade the soul, and fear not, Weep 
All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep 

Vain memory's vision of a vanished head 

As all that lives of all that once was he 

Save that which lightens from his word: but we. 
Who, seeing the sunset-colored waters roll. 

Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea, 

Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole, 
And life and death but shadows of the soul. 

December 15. 



■^^k^k^^^^^^^h^^^^^S^^^^^i^.^^ 



On the following pages will be found 
the complete list of titles in "The Mod- 
ern Library," including those published 
during the Fall of Nineteen Hundred 
and Nineteen. New titles are added 
in the Spring and Fall of every year. 



Modern Library of the World's Best Books 



LIST OF TITLES 

For convenience in ordering please use number at right of title. 

A MODERN BOOK OF CRITICISMS (81) 

Edited with an Introduction by 
LUDWIG LEWISHOiN 

ANDREYEV, LEONID (1871- ) 

The Seven That Were Hanged and The Red 
Laugh (45) 

Introduction by THOMAS SELTZER 

ATHERTON, GERTRUDE 
Rezanov (71) 

Introduction by WILLIAM MARION REEDY 

BALZAC, HONORE DE (1799-1850) 
Short Stories (40) 

BAUDELAIRE, PIERRE CHARLES (1821-1867) 
His Prose and Poetry (70) 

BEARDSLEY, THE ART OF AUBREY(1872-1898) 
64 Black and White Reproductions (42) 

Introduction by ARTHUR SYMONS 

BEERHOHM, MAX (1872- ) 
Zuleika Dobson (50) 

Introduction by FRANCIS HACKETT 
BEST GHOST STORIES (73) 

Introduction by ARTHUR B. REEVE 

BEST HUMOROUS AMERICAN SHORT 
STORIES (87) 

Edited with an Introduction by 
ALEXANDER JESSUP 
BEST RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES (18) 

Edited with an Introduction by 
THOMAS SELTZER 

BUTLER, SAMUEL (1835-1902) 

The Way of All Flesh (13) 
CARPENTER, EDWARD (1844- ) 

Love Coming of Age (51) 

CHEKHOV, ANTON (1860-1904) 

Rothschild's Fiddle and Thirteen Other 
Stories (31) 

CHESTERTON, G. K. (1874- ) 

The Man Who Was Thursday (35) 



Modern Library of the World's Best Books 

D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE (1864- ) 
The Flame of Life (65) 

DAUDET, ALPHONSE (1840-1897) 
Sapho (85) 

In same volume with Prevost's **Manon 
Lescaut" 

DOSTOYEVSKY, FEDOR (1821-1881) 
Poor People (10) 

Introduction by THOMAS SELTZER 

DOWSON, ERNEST (1867-1900) 
Poems and Prose (74) 

Introduction by ARTHUR S YMONS 

DUNSANY, LORD (Edward John Plunkett) 

(1878- ) 

A Dreamer's Tales (34) 

Introduction by PADRIAC'COLUM 
Book of Wonder (43) 

EVOLUTION IN MODERN THOUGHT (37) 
A Symposium, including Essays by Haeckel, 
Thomson, Weismann, etc. 

FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE (1821-1880) 
Madame Bovary (28) 

FRANCE, ANATOLE (1844- ) 

The Red Lily (7) 

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (22) 
Introduction by LAFCADIO HEARN 
GAUTIER, THEOPHILE (1811-1872) 

Mile, de Maupin (53) 

GEORGE, W. L (1882- ) 
A Bed of Roses (75) 

Introduction by EDGAR SlALTUS 
GILBERT, W. S. (1836-1911) 

The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, lolanthe, 
The Gondoliers (26) 

Introduction by CLARENCE DAY, Jr. 

GISSING, GEORGE (1857-1903) 

The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (46) 
Introduction by PAUL ELMER MORE 
De GONCOURT, E. and J. (1822-1896) (1830-1870) 
Renee Mauperin (76) 

Introduction by EMILE ZOLA 



Modern Library of the World's Best Books 

GORKY, JVTAXIM (1868- ) 

Creatures That Once Were Men and Four 
Other Stories (48) 

Introduction by G. K. CHESTERTON 

HARDY, THOMAS (1840- ) 

The Mayor of Casterbridge (17) 

Introduction by JOYiCE KILMER 

HOWELLS. WILLIAM DEAN (1837- ) 
A Hazard of New Fortunes (25) 

Introduction by AlLEXANDER HARVEY 

IBANEZ, VICENTE BLASCO (1867- ) 
The Cabin (69) 

Introduction by 

JOHN GARRETT UNDERHILL 

IBSEN, HENRIK (1828-1906) 

A DolFs House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the 
People (6); Hedda Gabler, Pillars of Society, 
The Master Builder (36) 

Introduction by H. L. MENCKEN 
The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, The League of 
Youth (54) 

JAMES, HENRY (1843-1916) 

Daisy Miller and An International Episode (63) 

Introduction by WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

KIPLING, RUDYARD (1865- ) 
Soldiers Three (3) 

LATZKO, ANDREAS (1876- ) 
' Men in War (88) 

MACY, JOHN (1877- ) 

The Spirit of American Literature (56) 

MAETERLINCK, MAURICE (1862- ) 

A Miracle of St. Antony, Pelleas and Melisande, 
The Death of Tintagiles, AUadine and Palomides, 
Interior, The Intruder (11) 

De MAUPASSANT, GUY (1850-1893) 
Love and Other Stories (72) 

Edited and translated with an Introduction by 

MICHAEL MOiNAHAN 
Mademoiselle Fifi, and Twelve Other Stories (8) 
Une Vie (57) 

Introduction by HENRY JAMES 



Modern Library of the World's Best Books 



MEREDITH, GEORGE (1828-1909) 
Diana of the Crossways (14) 

Introduction by ARTHUR SYMONS 

MOORE, GEORGE (1853- ) 

Confessions of a Young Man (16) 

Introduction by FLOYD DBLL 

NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH (1844-1900) 
Thus Spake Zarathustra (9) 

Introduction by 

BRAU FOERSTER-NIETZSCHE 
Beyond Good and Evil (20) 

Introduction by 

WILLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT 
Genealogy of Morals (62) 

NORRIS, FRANK (1870-1902) 
McTeague (60) 

Introduction by HENRY S. PANCOAST 

PATER, WALTER (1839-1894) 
The Renaissance (86) 

Introduction by ARTHUR SYMONS 

PREVOST, ANTOINE FRANCOIS (1697-1763) 
Manon Lescaut (85) 

In same volume with Daudet's Sapho 

RODIN, THE ART OF (1840-1917) 

64 Black and White Reproductions (41) 

Introduction by LOUIS WEINBERG 

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE (1858-1919) 

Selected Addresses and Public Papers (78) 

Edited with an Introduction by 
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART 

SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR (1862- ) 

Anatol, Living Hours, The Green Cockatoo (32) 

Introduction bv ASHLEY DUKES 
Bertha Garlan (39) 

SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR (173S-1860) 
Studies in Pessimism (12) 

Introduction by T. B. SAUNDEIRS 

SHAW, G. B. (1856- ) 

An Unsocial Socialist (15) 



30 W 



Modern Library of the World's Best Books 



SINCLAIR, MAY 
The Belfry (68) 

STEPHENS, JAMES 
Mary, Mary (30) 

Introduction by PADRIAICCOLUM 

STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS (1850-1894> 
Treasure Island (4) 

STIRNER, MAX (Johann Caspar .Schmidt) 
(1806-1856) 

The Ego and His Own (49) 

STRINDBERG, AUGUST (1849-1912) 

Married (2) 

Introduction by THOMAS SELTZER 
Miss Julie, The Creditor, The Stronger Woman, 

Motherly Love, Paria, Simoon (52) 

SUDERMANN, HERMANN (1857- ) 
Dame Care (33) 

SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES 

(1837-1909) 

Poems (23) 

Introduction by ERNEST RHYS 

THOMPSON, FRANCIS (1859-1907) 
Complete Poems (38) 

TOLSTOY, LEO (1828-1910) 

Redemption and Two Other Plays (77) 

Introduction by ARTHUR HOPKINS 
The Death of Ivan Ilyitcb and Four Other 
Stories (64) 

TRAUBEL, HORACE (1858- ) 
Chants Communal (79) 

Special Introduction by the author for this 
edition 

TURGENEV, IVAN (1818-1883) 
Fathers and Sons (21) 

Introduction by THOMAS SELTZER 
Smoke (80) 

Introduction by JOHN REED 

VILLON, FRANCOIS (1431-1461) 
Poems (58) 

Introduction by JOHN PAYNE 



Modern Library of the World's Best Books 



VOLTAIRE, (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET) 

(1694-1778) 

Candida (47) 

Introduction by PHILIP LITTELL 

WELLS, H. G. (1866- ) 
The War in the Air (5) 

New Preface by H. G. Wells for this edition 
Ann Veronica (27) 

WILDE, OSCAR (1856-1900) 
Dorian Gray (1) 
Poems C19) 

Fairy Tales and Poems in Prose (61) 
Salome, The Importance of Being Earnest, 
Lady Windermere's Fan (83) 

Introduction by EDGAR SALTUS 
An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No 
Importance (84) 

WILSON, WOODROW (1856- ) 
Selected Addresses and Public Papers (55) 

Edited with an Introduction bv 
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART 

WOMAN QUESTION, THE (59) 

A Symposium, including Essays by Ellen Key. 
Havelock Ellis, G. Lowes Dickinson, etc. 

Edited by T.R.SMITH 

YEATS, W. B. (1865- ) 

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales (44) 



oo 



V 







>0 






^o 




C Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proc 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2009 

PreservationTechnologi 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVA 
111 Thomson Park Drive 
'V* "^^^^j^^i^^ Cranberry Township, PA 16066 

■^ ' • • S * (724) 779-2111 











^-. 
























- '^^'^0^ I ^CT BOO W0W 



I*' 




JAN im ■ 






'Wmm 



1M 



'y}: 

:|';i; 



v'/,iii.';j 



i^Hr'^lJ 







■(' l.'''v 












